12  Race & Class 51(3)

states and within EU states (as the UK is already planning) and to sea and land travel too (as the UK is already planning). 6 A Sivanandan, ‘New circuits of imperialism’, Race & Class (Vol 30, no. 4, 1989).   7 A Sivanandan, ‘Racism in the age of globalisation’, speech to the third annual Claudia Jones

Memorial Lecture, October 2004, . 8 EU governments to give law enforcement agencies access to all communications data,
www.statewatch.org/news/2001/may/03Aenfopol.htm>, and see Statewatch’s Observatory on The EU-FBI telecommunications surveillance system, . 9 Note from the European Commission’s Directorate B, UnitB/1 Police and Customs Cooperation

Working Party, held 13–14 October 1999. 10 The ‘war on freedom and democracy’, an analysis of the effects on civil liberties and demo-

cratic culture in the EU by Tony Bunyan (September 2002), . 11 See: Action on Rights for Children, . 12 Commission Green Paper on detection technologies in the work of law enforcement, customs and other security authorities COM(2006) 474 final; Statewatch Analysis: Detection technologies and democracy, September 2006, Tony Bunyan. 13 The ‘principle of availability’ by Tony Bunyan (December 2006),
.org/analyses/no-59-p-of-a-art.pdf>. 14 ‘Scoreboard’ on post-Madrid counter-terrorism plans (March 2004),
.org/analyses/no-37-scoreboard-eu-plan.pdf>. 15 On two major issues – mandatory data retention and the fingerprinting of everyone for pass-

ports and ID cards – the EU is ahead of the US. 16 UK: ASBOwatch, . 17 This usually leads to mountains of unrequested letters, flyers, emails and phone calls to get us to buy more of their goods. 18 See SWIFT documentation:
agreement.htm>. 19 In 2008, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that this practice was unlawful. However,

the UK government is proposing to still keep people’s DNA for up to twelve years. 20 ‘Cultural cleansing’, European Race Bulletin (No. 62, Winter 2008). 21 Greece: 5,432 immigrants questioned in massive security sweep in July–August 2005 at request of MI6, . 22 See Liz Fekete, Integration, Islamophobia and civil rights in Europe (London, Institute of Race

Relations, 2008), in particular A. Sivanandan’s preface. 23 UK: Stop & search: Ethnic injustice continues unabated,
uk-stop-and-search-2005.pdf>. 24 Wilton Park is a government sponsored thinktank. Wilton Park paper 120, HMSO, 1996. 25 Tony Bunyan, ‘While Europe sleeps’, . 26 ‘Democracy’ in the EU (and often nationally too) is defined as ‘representative democracy’

which, in my view, is not a political theory but a description of reality. 27 Letter to the Guardian, Dr Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet (14 December 2008). Slouching towards dystopia: the new military futurism MATT CARR

SAGE Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC

Abstract:  In recent years, the military establishments of the US and the UK have produced a series of reports that attempt to ‘think the unthinkable’ in imagining future threats to the security of the West. A new genre of military futurology has emerged which owes as much to apocalyptic Hollywood movies as it does to the cold war tradition of ‘scenario planning’. Often outlandish and bizarre in its prophecies, and always dystopian, this new military futurism sees threats to the western way of life emanating not only from rogue states, weapons of mass destruction and terrorism but also from resurgent nationalism, conflicts over dwindling resources, migration, disease, organised crime, abrupt climate change and the emergence of ‘failed cities’ where social disorder is rife. This article provides a survey of the genre, showing how the grim predictions of the military futurists provide a justification for endless global war against enemies that may never exist. Keywords:  futurology, military-industrial complex, strategic studies, thinktanks, US hegemony

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

Donald Rumsfeld1

Matt Carr is a writer and journalist living in Derbyshire. His latest book is Blood and Faith: the purging of Muslim Spain 1492–1614 (London, Hurst, 2010).

Race & Class Copyright © 2010 Institute of Race Relations, Vol. 51(3): 13-32 10.1177/0306396809354164 http://rac.sagepub.com