MNT will be a very destabilizing technology, one that will change the relation that military power has to state power, and change the structural stability of the present world system. To address the first point, that the relation between military power and state power will be changed by MNT, we can start by considering one of the strangest aspects of the Cold War, which is the fact that it was cold. For over 40 years, the Soviet Union and the United States jockeyed for supremacy on the world stage. They armed themselves for eventual war with each other, they threatened each other, they pointed their nuclear weapons at each other. And yet, they never fought. But the decades of research and development, testing, practicing and manufacturing, not to mention the trillions of dollars spent, were not wasted. That is because one of the purposes of military forces is to deter attack, and deterrence works.
Deterrence works when one side convinces the other that it is both willing and able to to inflict unacceptable harm on the other. These two components are crucial for a successful deterrence; without either one, it will fail. Note, however, that neither has to be real. It is only necessary for the other side to believe it is so. Conversely, it may happen that one side is both willing and able to harm the other, but the other initiates hostilities anyway, unaware of this fact. The Korean War began for this reason. The U.S. did not make clear its intention to fight in the case of an invasion of South Korea, and in the mistaken belief that the U.S. would not fight, the North invaded, thus starting a war that cost many lives and accomplished virtually nothing. Deterrence depends on the potential aggressor's perception of the situation, and not on the reality of it.
Another purpose of military forces is to compel other states to do what they would not otherwise do by acting as a threat. Threatening military action is commonplace in the relations among states, and it need not be explicit to be effective. The belief that another state is more powerful may be enough to compel one state to bend to the will of the stronger, even though no open threat was ever made; implicit threat is present in obvious strength. Often, the demonstration of potential violence is the key ingredient in getting the most bargaining power out of military forces. This is why, for example, spy satellites are not completely unwelcome; they allow the enemy to see that one is not weak.
But a case can be made for just the opposite effect: that the existence of military forces and armaments provokes war, or at least contributes to hostility and suspicion. U.S. President George Washington said that "[t]o be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." However, a later President, James Monroe, said that "[p]reparation for war is a constant stimulus to suspicion and ill-will," which would not do much for the cause of peace. Which one is correct? It appears that they are both correct, depending on the circumstances.
In a state of general peace and the absence of any imminent threat, a build-up of armaments by one state will almost certainly be interpreted by other states as a prelude to war, and thus be viewed as a threat. In this circumstance, Monroe would be correct in advising against war preparedness as a means of preserving peace, as threatening one's neighbors may bring the existing peace to an end. But in other circumstances, the build-up or maintenance of armaments may contribute directly to the continuation of peace by acting as a deterrent against aggression. Where peace does not exist (and the simple absence of actual fighting does not constitute complete peace, as the Cold War demonstrated), where there is an implicit or explicit threat to a state, the deterrent effect of being ready for battle may dissuade a potential aggressor from initiating a hot war.
An unfortunate side-effect of molecular manufacturing is that it may contribute to the creation of a state of war regardless of the circumstances, whether they are ones of peace or of war. If MNT makes weapons invisible, and does the same for factories, then the ability of one side to measure the capabilities of the other will be severely hampered, and perhaps eliminated completely. This will be destabilizing in two ways. First, by making some weapons impossible to detect, it will prevent those weapons from fulfilling their role as deterrents in times when deterrents are needed, and thus will decrease the ability of states to dissuade potential aggressors from initiating military hostilities. (It may also put states in the unfortunate position of needing to advertise their military strength in non-passive ways. If allowing some of one's powerful weapons to be seen ceases to be possible, it may be necessary to make them felt, to demonstrate their destructiveness by using them to destroy.) Secondly, the lack of armaments, which is necessary for not projecting hostile intentions and arousing suspicions during peacetime, will be meaningless. The lack of detectable armaments will not in itself be reassuring to other states, and even the true absence of armaments will be inadequate proof of commitment to lasting peace, when the tools of war can be generated cheaply on a few days' notice, thanks to self-replicating factories (1). This will be destabilizing because knowledge of another state's capabilities is crucial to creating a threat profile, to knowing which states pose a threat and which do not. When a state cannot tell which states threaten it, then it will be prudent for that state to consider all states to be potential threats. "... [T]he primary and legitimate purpose of military forces is deterrence, not [defense], and it is only when deterrence fails that [defense] becomes necessary." (2) If deterrence becomes less effective in the age of invisible machines, then defense (i.e., warfare) may take primacy.
Self-replicating factories will also make war less "victory-oriented." The final stage of modern wars between states never ends with complete annihilation of the vanquished. Sometimes the offending state is disbanded, her territory swallowed up by neighbors (although these states often rise again after a few decades and another war), but usually the state is "set right" and allowed to continue its existence. The outcome of the Second World War illustrates this: Italy, Germany and Japan were occupied and allowed to continue to exist; today they are allies of most of their former enemies. After the First World War, Germany still existed, but was stripped of her industry. Victory in terms of total defeat (rather than annihilation) of the enemy will become much more difficult when industrial might can be rebuilt in a matter of days. Taking away an enemy's ability to wage war may become extremely difficult, and as a result, war will become more punitive in nature, in an attempt to make it too costly for an enemy to use his (indestructible) power to hurt others. This is why civilian populations will become the natural targets of military action; they will be one of the few remaining potential targets, and their destruction will be truly costly.
To address the second point, that MNT will undermine the structural stability of the present world system, we need to look back almost 350 years to the publication of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, in 1651. In this work, Hobbes introduced his theory of the "state of nature," a description of a state of pure anarchy. This theory is important to our consideration of the impact of MNT on the world system, because states today exist in a state of anarchy, and Hobbes can shed light on the order in our anarchy, and give us a glimpse of its future.
The life of an individual in the state of nature, Hobbes says, is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," and it is no wonder, considering the circumstances he has to face. For one thing, there are no laws, and there is no one to enforce moral behavior. Each man must provide for himself all things, including defense. Each must fear for his life at all times, and even sleep, which is not optional for individuals, carries a risk of death. The individual can be killed, and he can be killed instantaneously. He is also capable of killing, and the strength of each is close enough that even the weakest can kill the strongest. This is the state of pure anarchy. Clearly, this situation is intolerable; one cannot even sleep without worrying about never waking up again. The solution, of course, is one we are all familiar with: the state. The state is necessary, Hobbes argued, because the state of nature will not accommodate a functioning society; government is the only alternative to a life that is "brutish and short."
States, too, exist in anarchy. There is no world government. And yet there is certainly a society of sorts. States know of each others' existence, they communicate with each other and they negotiate. Society, Hobbes argues, is not possible in the state of nature, so if Hobbes is right, and his description of the state of nature makes this point a credible one, then modern states must exist in something other than a state of nature. A close examination of states shows that their situation is indeed different.
For one thing, states are extremely difficult to kill, especially today when the populations of many states number in the tens of millions. And they certainly cannot be killed instantaneously, which is part of the condition of Hobbes' solitary and poor man; states are, in a practical sense, immortal. Unlike individuals, states never sleep; they can be eternally vigilant if they choose. And also unlike individuals, the weakest cannot kill the strongest (since states are so difficult to kill); in fact, most of the weakest can hardly hurt the strongest at all. Among states, there is an enormous difference in relative strength. Perhaps the only aspect of pure anarchy that the world system shares with Hobbes' vision is its general lawlessness. Although states can form alliances, sign treaties and agreements and such, there is no supreme authority to ensure that promises made are promises kept. There are no real laws to enforce, and there is no enforcer. But due to their lower vulnerability to death relative to the individual, states are able to function without a government where individuals would not be. There is order in the anarchy we find at the international level, a regularity that suggests stability, and this stability rests on the differences between states and individuals.
The advent of MNT seems likely to upset that stability because it will bring states closer to Hobbes' state of nature, thus changing the fundamentals of the international system, and increasing the probability of war at the time when states will target history's most horrific technology on civilian populations.
MNT will bring states closer to Hobbes' state of nature by making them more closely resemble individuals in their vulnerability, due to the impact that this new technology will have on the conduct of warfare. The terrifying power of nano-based weapons will make total annihilation of a state's population more possible, and this will make states approximate the key vulnerability of individuals: their mortality. And, as we saw above, MNT will not only make genocide possible, but, because of the fact that it will remove more traditional military targets, it will make genocide a more likely, even preferred, course of action in war.
MNT will also bring states closer to the condition of individuals in the state of nature by creating a general equality in destructive capacity. This is a process already underway today, in the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology. Since 1945, the nuclear club has grown from just one (the U.S.) to 7 (the US, Russia, China, France, Britain, India, and Israel). Several more nations are known or suspected to be pursuing nuclear weapons development (North Korea, Pakistan, Iran), some have possessed them at one time (South Africa, Ukraine), and most likely others will join in the race. Nuclear technology is hard to contain, despite the fact that much of the equipment needed to produce bomb-grade material is expensive, specialized and heavy, making it difficult to purchase and transport secretly. If ensuring nuclear non-proliferation is proving difficult, then we can expect much more difficulty in containing the tools and knowledge necessary to implement a nanotechnology development program. This is especially true because of the high-level of dual-use technology that would make up a nanotechnology laboratory: Scanning Tunneling Microscopes (used in materials science and in the semiconductor industry), high-powered molecular modeling software and computers to run it on (used in scientific visualization and in pharmaceutical research), and common materials. As MNT spreads, so will the ability to create extremely powerful and deadly weapons, and the ability to rebuild an industrial base in a short time. These two consequences of the spread of MNT will make each state more of a threat to its neighbors by making it more deadly (due to the weapons) and more difficult to defeat (as opposed to destroy) in case of war (due to the self-replicating industrial base).
The third condition suffered by the individual in the state of nature already exists today, and that is the lack of authority. Just as individuals can rely on no one but themselves, so too are states dependent only on their own ability to defend themselves. (3) There is no "higher authority" to whom a state can appeal if it has been wronged, there is no international police force that will punish the offending state, and there is no global legislature to set the laws of state behavior. What is lacking is government, and in the past this has not been as large a problem as it would be for individuals because of the special characteristics of states mentioned above. But if states become both mortal and equal in power due to the dissemination of MNT, then the lack of global authority will take on the same urgency that it has in the state of nature.
(1)"...[A] suitably designed and programmed molecular manufacturing system, built along the lines of the exemplar architecture, can be used to build objects that, when unfolded, are substantially identical to itself." Nanosystems, p. 427. Also, "A 1 kg system can build a 1 kg product object in ~ 1 hr ... . The range of products that can be produced is large, encompassing high-performance structures, massively-parallel supercomputers, and additional molecular manufacturing systems." p 441.
(3)"States must rely ultimately on their own resources and must strive to maintain their relative positions in the system... ." (Keohane and Nye, p. 247)