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| GLOBALIZATION IN REVERSE |
| 2004-12-12 |
| The world can now count on one geopolitical earthquake every 10 years. Between 1985 and 1995, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall, the implosion of the Soviet Union, the collapse of Communist parties the world over, and America's emergence as the world's only superpower. Between 1995 and 2005, it was the 9/11 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that triggered a war on, and the defeat of, Afghanistan's despotic Taliban regime followed by a war on, and the defeat of, Saddam Hussein's bloody tyranny. So between 2005 and 2015, what's on the global menu? Movers and shakers as well as long-range thinkers and planners meet in a wide variety of intelligence and think tank huddles. These over-the-horizon, out-of-the-box appraisals range from good news scenarios (the minority) to the kind of global unraveling funk whose only antidote would be the shelter and solace of a desert island. Behind all the geopolitical jargon about the "functioning core of globalization," "system perturbations," and "dialectics of transformation," there is the underlying fear of a Vietnam-like debacle in Iraq that would drive the United States into isolationism - a sort of globalization in reverse. Among the most interesting and optimistic librettos in the game of nations is peace in the Middle East made possible by a deal with Iran. Keeping this kind of negotiation with the ayatollahs secret in the age of the Internet and 4 million bloggers taxes credulity. It would also take a Kissinger or a Brzezinski to pull it off. However, if successful, it would look something like this: -- A nuclear Iran removed from the "axis of evil," and recognized as the principal player in the region, is the quid. -- For the quo, Iran agrees to recognize Israel and the two-state solution that establishes a "viable" Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. -- Iran ends all support for terrorist activities against Israel. Iran-supplied and funded Hezbollah disarms and confines its activities to the political and economic arena in Lebanon. In reality, Iran is automatically the region's dominant power after U.S. armed forces withdraw from Iraq. The Shia side of Islam, long the persecuted majority in Iraq, will emerge victorious in forthcoming free national elections. A minimum of 1 million Iranians have moved into Iraq since Operation Iraqi Freedom 2œ years ago. The Iran-Iraq border is porous, mountainous, largely unguarded, and no one has even an approximate count. The Jordanian intelligence service believes the Iranian influx into Iraq could be as high as 3 million. In Syria, the Alawi regime, in power since 1970, is also a Shia sect of Islam. In Lebanese politics, the Hezbollah party is a Shia movement. The oilfields of Saudi Arabia are located in the eastern province of the kingdom where, Shia are the majority - and Iran is a hop, skip and jump away. One all too realistic geopolitical nightmare scenario was a WMD terrorist attack on the West Coast. A nuclear device detonates in a container ship about to enter Long Beach in California. News had just broken about the pollution of the U.S. food supply, and most analysts assumed transnational terrorism was behind it. The United States can kick butts anywhere, but seems helpless in coping with asymmetrical warfare. In quick succession: -- The dollar ceases to be the world's reserve currency -- The shaky coalition that governs Iraq collapses, and civil war breaks out between Sunni and Shia -- The fear of the unknown produces a new consensus in the United States that global civilization is no longer America's business. -- The debate in the United States shifts to the requirements for adequate city perimeter defenses. -- Now that the United States is no longer the global cop, the defense budget of almost half a trillion dollars can be drastically pruned and savings transferred to homeland security. -- U.S. client states are informed they are now on their own. Congress abolishes the global aid function. -- Egypt loses its annual stipend of $2.5 billion; Taiwan and Israel are told they will now have to fend for themselves. -- Social trust becomes the new glue of society - bonding with like-minded neighbors that share each other's values. -- International coalitions dissolve and new ones emerge. China seizes new opportunities for its short- and long-range needs for raw materials in the developing world - from Brazil to sub-Sahara's pockets of mineral wealth. -- The United States, Canada and Mexico form a new stand-alone alliance with Britain. -- Turkey, Israel and Iran become a new core group for self-protection against dysfunctional neighbors that have no upward mobility. -- The European Union and Russia, in continuing decline, close ranks; the EU inherits de facto responsibility for Africa south of the Sahara, plagued by genocidal wars and the AIDS epidemic. -- China and India, with one-third of the world's population, and competitive with Western countries in high-tech jobs and technology, move into a de facto alliance. -- Pakistan's pro-American President Pervez Musharraf does not survive the 9th assassination plot; an Islamist general takes over and appoints Dr. A. Q. Khan, the former CEO of an international nuclear black market for the benefit of America's "axis of evil" enemies, as Pakistan's new president. -- The House of Saud is shaken to its foundations as a clutch of younger royal princes, who have served in the armed forces, arrest the plus 70-year-olds now in charge - known as the Sudairi seven - and call for the kingdom's first elections. -- Osama Bin Laden returns to Saudi Arabia, where he is welcomed as a national hero. Bin Laden scores an overwhelming plurality in the elections and is now the most popular leader in the country. -- Dr. A. Q. Khan sends Bin Laden a message of congratulations and dispatches his new defense minister, Gen. Hamid Gul -- a former intelligence chief and admirer of the world's most wanted terrorist, who hates America with a passion -- to Riyadh. His mission is to negotiate a caliphate that would merge Pakistan's nuclear weapons with Saudi oil resources and monetary reserves. -- Northern Nigeria sends a message to Islamabad and Riyadh requesting that it be considered as a member of the caliphate. -- Absent the long-time global cop, and traditional alliances in shambles, transnational criminal enterprises thrive as they enjoy unfettered access the world over. -- U.S. multinational companies, unable to protect their plants and employees, devolve back whence they came. -- International airlines morph back into inter-regional air links. -- Switzerland, a small defensive country with compulsory military service, is in vogue again; larger countries with several ethnic groups begin breaking down a la Yugoslavia. -- Goods stamped "Made in China. Secured in Singapore" are back in business, smuggled into the United States. -- The EU can no longer cope with millions of North Africans and sub-Sahara Africans flooding into Spain, Italy, France, who then roam freely and hungry in the rest of Europe. Islamist radicals sally out of their European slum tenements to join the siege of U.S. Embassies to protest their jobless plight. -- Japan goes nuclear after U.S. troops are withdrawn from South Korea. A slight detour from this global ship o' fools imaginary cruise had Pakistan and India, no longer restrained by the United States, stumbling into miscalculation and exchanging a nuclear salvo over Kashmir. One billion Indians survive minus one city, Islamabad. Pakistan, part of India prior to independence in 1947, collapses as a unitary state, and becomes part of India again. To be warned is forewarned. Short of WMD terrorism, the intelligence insiders are concerned about implosions in the former Soviet Muslim republics. They also say there is no more important objective for the Bush 43B Administration than to repair transatlantic relations. Chris Patten, the EU's outgoing foreign minister says, "The world deserves better than testosterone on one side and superciliousness on the other." |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #15 Maybe in the world of that author a nuke on US soil resutls in a restreat to a defensive core. But "Jacksonian" america is going to take the gloves off - and several places in the Middle east will be given ultimatums: Kill these Islamofascists off yourselves, or the next nuclear detonation will be 100KT at 500m over the main mosque in your capital, simultaneously with 3 1MT detonations at 100m over Mecca. Simple as that - this guy doesnt understand the "Jacksonian" mindset that dominates in times liek that - its the same mindset that dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the one that sent flamethrowers after the Japanese in bunkers when they would not surrender, the same mindset that won Iwo Jima in spite of the cost so that we could bomb all the cities in Japan flat, then burn the rubble with incendiary bombs. Its the mindset that is shown by Alvin York, Audie Murphy, Carlos Hathcock, Shugart & Gordon, and the current btrave warriors in Afghanistan and Iraq. *THAT* is the mindset that would be loosed upon the Islamist's world - one that will, like Grant, accept nothing but the complete and unconditional surrender and remaking of the poisoned culture of Islam, or, failing htat, its complete and permanent eradication, root and branch, from the earth. The world has yet to the the American people in full fury - but if they pop a nuke on us, they will see horrors they had never imagined, unleashed upon them; Delivered harshly and coldly, from a determined and angry people bent on the eradication of that threat to its children, homes and society. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2004-12-12 7:19:19 PM |
| #14 Maybe in the world of that author a nuke on US soil resutls in a restreat to a defensive core. But "Jacksonian" america is going to take the gloves off - and several places in the Middle east will be given ultimatums: Kill these Islamofascists off yourselves, or the next nuclear detonation will be 100KT at 500m over the main mosque in your capital, simultaneously with 3 1MT detonations at 100m over Mecca. Simple as that - this guy doesnt understand the "Jacksonian" mindset that dominates in times liek that - its the same mindset that dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the one that sent flamethrowers after the Japanese in bunkers when they would not surrender, the same mindset that won Iwo Jima in spite of the cost so that we could bomb all the cities in Japan flat, then burn the rubble with incendiary bombs. Its the mindset that is shown by Alvin York, Audie Murphy, Carlos Hathcock, Shugart & Gordon, and the current btrave warriors in Afghanistan and Iraq. *THAT* is the mindset that would be loosed upon the Islamist's world - one that will, like Grant, accept nothing but the complete and unconditional surrender and remaking of the poisoned culture of Islam, or, failing htat, its complete and permanent eradication, root and branch, from the earth. The world has yet to the the American people in full fury - but if they pop a nuke on us, they will see horrors they had never imagined, unleashed upon them; Delivered harshly and coldly, from a determined and angry people bent on the eradication of that threat to its children, homes and society. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2004-12-12 7:19:19 PM |
| #13 There is this common assumption that the US could not retaliate if terrorists attacked US w/nuclear weapon. It is far more likely that a "kill 'em all and let God sort them out" policy would follow. First,I would expect every terrorist camp in world to be hit in short order. Diplomatic niceties would be ignored by US. Iran,Syria,Saudi Arabia would be given ultimatums to immediately stop financing terrorists and to turn over any terrorists in their countries. Any nation sponsoring Islamic terrorists could expect a wave of missile attacks turning out the lights. Widespread condemnation of US actions could lead to US leaving UN,w/the funds US spend on Un going to defense build-up and direct foreign aid to countries helping US. |
| Posted by: Stephen 2004-12-13 12:05:40 AM |
| #12 These are just PC "Pipe Dreams", whims and whists, morso since the Failed Left itself has no intention of allowing or tolerating most or all of these scenarios. The USA cannot be in "isolation" because the Failed Left and Commie Clintons are out to force Socialism, OWG, and Empire on the USA, i.e. GLOBAL INTEGRATION, by any means necessary. The International Lefts are so desperate and power-mad/obsessed they are willing to work for a global empire of the failed and failing, not of the successful, let alone one of the prosperous. They are forcing and tricking America into accomplishing the historically GLOBAL agenda of [revolutionary]International Leftism-Socialism-Communism-Progressive while Communism-centric Russia-China modernize, whereupon US power will be finally usurped and suborned once America is sufficiently destabilized, no different than what the Clintons and LeftMedias did to the Reagan-Republican economy, validating its superiority once a DemLib became POTUS but giving themselves the full credit for same instead of to Reagan, GOP-Rightism or even DemoCapitalism. Bill Clinton validated and justified Leftism-Socialism once, before, and forever, unto eternity, and thus by extens also validating ditto for GLOBAL SOCIALISM, GLOBAL WELFARISM-SUBSIDISM, GLOBAL INEGRATION AND CENTRALISM, and GLOBAL OWG, etc. NO MATTER THEIR PC RHETORIC, NOR WHETHER USURPED OR NOT, THE LEFT WILL GEN NOT TOLERATE, NOR ACCEPT, THE USA NOT ENGAGING OR WARRING FOR GLOBAL EMPIRE! When Putin and Russia, now includ China, talk about waging PREVENTIVE, MIL-BASED MEASURES ags terror or to protect ags terror, THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT THE USA, i.e. ATTACKING THE USA-NORAM, IFF ONLY BY PC "MISTAKE" ala the USA in IRAQ-AFGHANISTAN ["NO WMDS IN IRAQ/ME"], NO MATTER HOW MANY ISLAMISTS ARE PC OR VERIFIABLY/MERITOR WIPED OUT! Remember, "Justified" US Global Empire = the USA is a ROGUE that must itself be inevitably and finally destroyed, "CONSTRAINED/SUBORNED AND CONTROLLED" as was said in PRAVDA. Americans must prepare for "...the day when AMerica is no longer the BIG BOY on the block" - you know, Bill Clinton's hatred of California-based BIG BOY-label restaurant food, the burgers that gave him heart problems! |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2004-12-12 11:37:21 PM |
| #11 Maybe in the world of that author a nuke on US soil resutls in a restreat to a defensive core. But "Jacksonian" america is going to take the gloves off - and several places in the Middle east will be given ultimatums: Kill these Islamofascists off yourselves, or the next nuclear detonation will be 100KT at 500m over the main mosque in your capital, simultaneously with 3 1MT detonations at 100m over Mecca. Simple as that - this guy doesnt understand the "Jacksonian" mindset that dominates in times liek that - its the same mindset that dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the one that sent flamethrowers after the Japanese in bunkers when they would not surrender, the same mindset that won Iwo Jima in spite of the cost so that we could bomb all the cities in Japan flat, then burn the rubble with incendiary bombs. Its the mindset that is shown by Alvin York, Audie Murphy, Carlos Hathcock, Shugart & Gordon, and the current btrave warriors in Afghanistan and Iraq. *THAT* is the mindset that would be loosed upon the Islamist's world - one that will, like Grant, accept nothing but the complete and unconditional surrender and remaking of the poisoned culture of Islam, or, failing htat, its complete and permanent eradication, root and branch, from the earth. The world has yet to the the American people in full fury - but if they pop a nuke on us, they will see horrors they had never imagined, unleashed upon them; Delivered harshly and coldly, from a determined and angry people bent on the eradication of that threat to its children, homes and society. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2004-12-12 7:19:19 PM |
| #10 Since this is Arnaud de Borchgrave, someone who once seemed to be quite erudite - now seeming to be so full of himself he's liable to explode, nothing in it surprises me. Much wild-eyed conjecture, so little revealed logic behind it. Individual items could, indeed, playout... but equally likely (more so?) would be the Mother Ship returns to take us all home. It's hard to accept that Benador Assoc "houses" such a bandwidth - from Mansoor Ijaz to Arnaud - that's some spectrum. |
| Posted by: .com 2004-12-12 5:12:44 PM |
| #9 Appeals as much to Susan Sontag et al as to Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot. I know. However, the previous examples are marginalized. In a country of approx~ 300M persons there are going to be some number of people like this. A small number, but a noisy number. I'm looking at the end result of policy decisions, and people like Perot and Sontag (now theres a match made in...somewhere!) have little or no input into policy decisions. The city on a hill, in the world but not of it does have its appeal, and a lot of people, including me would like to tell the rest of the planet to f__k off. But I, and by extension I hope the majority of Americans also understand that the world is not going to let us stay aloof. We're too much of a temptation, and as a result we have to be active in the world, if only out of self preservation. If in the process we make the world a little better, well thats just gravy, and makes the nasty bits of the job easier to endure. |
| Posted by: N Guard 2004-12-12 4:01:19 PM |
| #8 The days when we would retreat into "Fotress America" are as over as the antebellum south Yes, but one should never underestimate the appeal of isolationism's siren song to Americans of both left and right. It's the flip side of John Winthrop's City on a Hill: in the world but not of it, free of the taint of old world corruption, back to the garden, etc. Appeals as much to Susan Sontag et al as to Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-12-12 3:05:45 PM |
| #7 Another bunch of morons who don't understand that most social change is just the expression of technology changes. To take one example, standoff precision weapons means the possesor can systematically destroy a country's power and communications infrastructure at minimal risk. Its real hard to run a country without telephones and electricity. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2004-12-12 2:58:54 PM |
| #6 I realy wish these LLLs would stop masturbating like this in public. The days when we would retreat into "Fotress America" are as over as the antebellum south. With the exception of a few hollyweird types, most of the american people know what the stakes are. For comparison, look at what happend at the nadir of the post vietnam period, the carter presidency. we most definately did not retreat into a shell. We may have been not quite as aeffective as we are today, but we were involved and busy bothering the rest of the planet. A nuking scenario like this would more likely trigger an invasion of Iran/Norkland/wherever as the highest likelyhood. Much less likely, but a very real possibility would be a demonstration saturation nuclear bombardment of one of the usual suspects. As for EU, putty, et al, there would be a deathly silence waitning for our response. We would prolly finish up by enunciating some variation on "no Izzy/failed/semi-unfriendly state will be allowed to have any kind of nuclear tech. period" policy. Enforced with preemtive zapping of capitals/rulers. While I hope nothing like this ever happens, it would be....entertaining, i guess, to see the usuaal suspects fall all over themselves trying to convince us it wudn't them. |
| Posted by: N Guard 2004-12-12 11:52:00 AM |
| #5 ima have 472 gigabytes of 80s video stored against the day the cable is destroy fraser will win in the end |
| Posted by: half 2004-12-12 10:51:51 AM |
| #4 Carl, be sure you store enough food to withstand a seige (or cable TV outage...or some other calamity) |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-12-12 10:27:19 AM |
| #3 Don't forget the asteroid impact or the dreaded global warming rising of the oceans sending coastal areas under hundreds of feet of water. May you live in interesting times. |
| Posted by: Don 2004-12-12 10:24:10 AM |
| #2 Many of these scenarios don't pass the "WTF?" test. "The debate in the United States shifts to the requirements for adequate city perimeter defenses" Yeah, right, can't wait to bring up the issue of the type of crennelation we need on our defensive walls,and how deep the moat should be, at the next town meeting. |
| Posted by: Carl in N.H. 2004-12-12 10:22:13 AM |
| #1 Many of these scenarios violate a principal of planning, "Never allow your opponent a single advantage." In other words, if they have an advantage, it is not through your permitting it, actively or passively. These scenarios also are scant in predicting possible major armed conflicts and regime changes. For example, there will be a US foreign policy under a republican administration. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2004-12-12 10:01:04 AM |