Wildfire

Is the pre-emptive mentality catching on?
by Nick van der Leek

America started it. They’re saying they have the right to attack countries they deem a pertinent threat to US security. And so far, they’ve made good on their promise. Their first attack on Iraq – Gulf War I – preceded this strategy, at least insofar as these intentions were made public. The first Gulf War was, we’re told, undertaken on behalf of Kuwait. But then, Kuwait was actually the culprit there – they had started drilling horizontal wells into Iraq, provoking a response, and providing America with a fairly good reason to get involved.

911 represents a reverse scenario, where a foreign group, not even a country, successfully penetrated US airspace and gouged a hole in the New York skyline, with damage to the Pentagon and attempted damage elsewhere.

America responded by launching two forays – one into Afghanistan, the other into Iraq. Both were not really responses to aggression, but really preemptive attacks. America maintains a presence in both those countries, and, realistically, cannot afford to leave either of these theatres, particularly Iraq.

With this background in mind, we now look elsewhere. When we contemplate the future, there are a number of scenarios that materialize, none of them particularly affirming.
The most immediate scenario is a showdown between Israel and Iran. To be accurate, what we may well be facing is a nuclear showdown, where both countries will try to pre-emptively nuke the other. The only way to prevent this situation, it could be argued, is to bomb Iran before they have achieved nuclear capability, which almost boils down to the same thing.

A similar scenario exists in the Far East, where North Korea already has its nuclear arsenal, and basically threatens to blow up the South Korean capital unless someone delivers plenty of groceries to this impoverished country. North Korea does not pose much of a threat in isolation. It’s unlikely to play its only card and then be vanquished in the aftermath. But North Korea becomes an extremely urgent matter when placed in the context of the upcoming World Championship between the two World Powers, China and the USA.

At present both giants are moving discreetly through the forest, collecting resources, surveying the wilderness, making deals with tribes far and wide. China is stirring as far away as Africa (including Zimbabwe) and Venezuela. America is storming into the heart of the Middle East, making clear its intentions to police and maintain the most vital resources. Of course, when the situation destabilizes, America may well seize the resources in its care.
Increasingly, the foraging fingers of China are brushing against America’s rough hands. China can walk into many of the countries where America finds itself overstretched and in classic Imperial overreach. The biggest economy in the world is trying to secure access to cheap fossil fuel resources, to keep its massive engines running. Meanwhile the world’s fastest growing economy, and one of the biggest investors in the American economy, is trying to do the same. At the moment, both powers feel they need the other to grow. But a tipping point will be reached at some point, where one or both countries realize that the world is not big enough for another oligarch. The next challenger for World Number One status will be China, and just like Germany did, it may soon feel it needs to extend its living space, just to provide room enough for all its people. Already China is struggling to power its cities. Already China is feverishly accumulating materials from all over the world, to build its expanding economy. Unfortunately for China, the resources they need are already so depleted, even if America mysteriously vanished, it’s unlikely that they would find enough resources to Powerup their whole country. Why? Because India is engaged in exactly the same project, right next door, and with another billion people who want cars, and phones and hamburgers and houses. With its 200 million man army, China may well feel compelled to act, and in doing so, enlist its old ally, North Korea, against the USA.

Currently, the type of strategy we are seeing has been described variously, but particularly by Heinberg (in his book Powerdown) as Last One Standing. It basically means that countries are not encouraging an adaptive or reflexive or responsive approach from their citizens. We’re not seeing anything approaching a sustainable psychology, a call towards downscaling or rescaling of economies. The fantasy still exists that we can attempt limitless growth that all countries can work furiously towards more and more profits, when for some time now the Earth has exceeded by far its human carrying capacity.

As we have seen in South Africa, the last thing people are considering is doing less business. They simply insist that more power is needed. Within this mindset, the major powers are converging on the increasingly limited resources on the planet. There is America, Europe and Asia, with China, India, Russia and Japan as the most obvious participants. For now, Europe has managed to pander to the US, but this will not always be so. In the same way, Japan has maintained a fairly neutral role for the last half a century, but that is changing.

In the world of nuclear weapons, a first strike has obvious advantages. Unfortunately, the run up to confrontation is likely to be very unstable, with countries like America needing to maintain strict controls over its own citizens. Iraq provides many useful clues as to the future of the conflicts that spread from this focal point. America also demonstrates that despite popular disapproval, wars will be fought, despite the fact that they are undermanned. Soon, attention will be focused on creating larger and larger forces to do battle in more and more regional battles.

There are currently redeployments going on. Americans stationed previously in Korea and Germany are now fighting in Iraq. It still hasn’t been enough, and not nearly as effective as the militarists had anticipated. More and more young people, especially American, will find that their futures and fates will be in the military, and at the same time, many will try to avoid this path. In order to maintain the war machine, we will see more domestic repression. There will be attempts to crush civilian rebellions. Many countries will follow America’s lead, creating laws with noble sounding names like the Patriot Act, to contain dissent and opposition. These laws will be all about forcing civilians to participate or cooperate in massive foreign campaigns.

The machinery for war is being designed and constructed in the present moment. The strategies are in place. But the populations that will be called to fight are sleeping. There may not be a way to avoid conflict, but there may well be a way to step off the path we’re on in favor of a path that has fewer soldiers, and more farmers. It boils down to the ability to break habits of previous investment. To stand back and as a large group, invest ourselves in a way of life that has a future for more than just one country’s citizens.