Managing an Unpredictable New Age.(International Edition)(Joshua Cooper Ramo's book 'The Age of the Unthinkable')(Book review)

Byline: Michael Freedman

Swine flu. Stock-market implosion. The Taliban advancing toward Islamabad. If it seems to you that every day brings with it yet another potentially earth-shattering event, you're not alone. In Joshua Cooper Ramo's new book, The Age of the Unthinkable, he argues that technological and economic shifts have created a world of unprecedented complexity, in which radical changes in one area are increasingly likely to produce radical effects in another. "One bank fails, then fifty; one country develops an atom bomb, a dozen try to follow; one computer or one child comes down with a virus, and the speed of its spread is incomprehensible."

The correct response, he writes, is unlikely to be found in the West, where most policymakers treat crises of all kinds as discrete events with well-defined endpoints. The Pentagon is guided by this world view, drawing up lists of dangers and then budgeting, training and organizing itself to eliminate each threat, head on. After September 11, George W. Bush vowed that the conflict would "end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing." The problem, says Ramo, is that when you focus on one object like "Saddam" you miss "the swirling, furious energy of the ...