...weather forecasters are giving us the biggest "Uncertain" in history. They say that there might, just might, be a catastrophic climate change in the next few decades. Global warming might suddenly trigger a massive global cooling.
They've heard this forecast in the Pentagon, too. So they are drawing up contingencies plans for the worst case scenario: a long era of deep freeze, raging storms, and massive drought that leaves billions of people struggling for the necessities of life.
This is no secret. Fortune magazine just published a summary of the report. What you can read there may seem perfectly sensible or perfectly insane. It all depends on your basic assumptions.
The Pentagon planners assume that the future cannot be any different from the past. "History shows that whenever humans have faced a choice between starving or raiding, they raid." So we must assume that, after the great climate change, "an ancient pattern reemerges: the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies... Warfare may again come to define human life." Or so they hope in the secret councils of the
But is anything in human life "inevitable"? Couldn't we decide to do it different this time? Why not start planning for global cooperation rather than competition? Apparently, this possibility is off the Pentagon's radar screen. In the past, scarcity usually made nations compete, not cooperate. Safest to bet that the future will be just like the past. Is that crazy? Or is it just common sense?
Of course, what looks crazy in one place can look like common sense somewhere else. If you are in a weak little country, hunkering down to weather the global storm might seem crazy. But this is the greatest military power in world history talking.
The Pentagon report does say we should "explore ways to offset abrupt cooling." But that is only a minor theme. Mostly it urges us to take care of Number One and keep the U.S. Number One, through an era of death and suffering beyond our wildest imaginings.
"The U.S. is better positioned to cope than most nations," the report says reassuringly. The U.S. has more "wealth, technology, and abundant resources" (not to mention military hardware). "That has a downside, though: It magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots gap and fosters bellicose finger-pointing at America."
Finger-pointing is the least of it, in the Pentagon's vision of a catastrophic future: "Turning inward, the U.S. effectively seeks to build a fortress around itself to preserve resources." U.S. borders are "strengthened to hold back starving immigrants from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean islands -- waves of boat people pose especially grim problems." ...
This morning, of course, there was a little press release.
As usual, it's mixed here not quite the way Pravda might like.
..."what we need for conventional victory is different from what we need for fighting insurgents, and fighting insurgents has relatively little connection to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. We can't afford it all."
Guess what Bu$hCo wants to drop. And it isn't fighting the insurgents who happen to have a more legitimate claim to their country's oil and future than Halliburton.
The Pentagon's most senior planners are challenging the longstanding strategy that requires the armed forces to be prepared to fight two major wars at a time. Instead, they are weighing whether to shape the military to mount one conventional campaign while devoting more resources to defending American territory and antiterrorism efforts...
What's this American territory stuff?
...An official designation of a counterterrorism role and a shift to a strategy that focuses on domestic defense would have a huge impact on the size and composition of the military.
In a nutshell, strategies that order the military to be prepared for two wars would argue for more high-technology weapons, in particular warplanes. An emphasis on one war and counterterrorism duties would require lighter, more agile forces - perhaps fewer troops, but more Special Operations units - and a range of other needs, such as intelligence, language and communications specialists.
Civilian and military officials are trying to decide to what degree to acknowledge that operations like the continuing presence in Iraq - not a full-blown conventional war, but a prolonged commitment - may be such a burden that it would not be possible to also fight two full-scale campaigns elsewhere...
After years of saying American forces were sufficient for a two-war strategy, "we've come to the realization that we're not," said another Defense Department official involved in the deliberations, who was granted anonymity because he could not otherwise discuss the talks, which are classified. "It's coming to grips with reality."
Senior leaders are trying to develop strategies that will do a better job of addressing the requirements of antiterrorism and domestic defense, while acknowledging that future American wars will most likely be irregular - against urban guerrillas and insurgents - rather than conventional...
So, you just wonder exactly where besides Iraq are we going to be fighting urban guerillas?
Do you ever get the feeling the plans of the
But that some how Big Time Dick is going to get a cut?
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