2007-05-24
Ban the Bomb
There was some brilliant stuff said in the Iraqi blogs, and here is one from the comments section of an Egyptian blog"
"And this is where I see the problem in today's world. Back in the 1930's, Hitler needed a powerful and well disciplined military, a good economy, a fanatized population, and a strong backcountry in order to wreak the havoc he indeed did. Fast forward to the early 21st century. For our present Hitlers, all of that is not needed since having a setting off a few nukes (irrelevant how it was obtained..., a big and wet kiss for the Dear Leader) will wreak a far worse havoc than Hitler did. The bar to set the world on fire has been drasitcally lowered, and this is why the West has to pre-emt the Saddams, the Ayatollahs, and the Dear Leaders.
We cannot wait for them to arrive to our shores. Because if they do, then the first step will be nuking instead of landing what the West can easily fight back.
Vilmos Soti"
Hopefully the fact that this was written by someone other than me will increase the chances of Joe Bloggs being able to actually understand it. However, here begins my own attempt at explaining the strategic situation in the world today.
First of all, our ancestors really stuffed up. After Nazi Germany was defeated, they should have immediately demanded the Soviet Union leave Eastern Europe. In fact, they should have demanded democratization and demilitarization of the USSR, the same as Japan got. The USSR actually started WWII. It wasn't just the Germans alone. They did it together.
Anyway, the past is the past. We need to deal with the mess we inherited rather than cry over spilt milk. The fact is that our ancestors let the enemy acquire nukes. Until those nukes have actually been rounded up and collected, we may still be hit by one or more. The danger is far from over. Russia, China and Pakistan have the nukes of greatest concern. The Russian ones are in the hands of someone who is obnoxious and scowls a lot, rather than an actual enemy, and probably not that much different from the French ones. The Chinese ones would potentially be used against us in a showdown over Taiwan, but we can probably avoid that conflict, and the Chinese don't really appear to be hostile. They seem to be interested in western consumer goods rather than trying to cause us harm. I'm not greatly concerned about them either.
The ones in Pakistan however, could be used not just against India, which is part of the free world (although historically completely immoral, allying with the Soviet Union during the Cold War), but against other members of the free world. We need to collect them. This is actually the largest threat in the world today. Al Qaeda is just a joke. It has limited ability to do harm. It is state actors with nukes that we need to be concerned about. And obviously stop state actors like Iran and North Korea from obtaining them in the first place. Until the nukes are collected, and without the ability to see into the future, we don't yet know how many nukes will strike the free world before the enemy's nukes are eliminated. It's bloody tough to get them too.
A tough calculation needs to be made to decide how to work through this minefield. These enemy countries could directly or indirectly unleash their nukes at any time. We'll never know for sure the absolute best way to get our hands on them. We can only do our best with the information we have available. The calculation with a country like Iran is quite straightforward. We can get to their nukes before they get to them themselves. To get to Pakistan's nukes, we have the following scenarios:
1. Nuke that country off the planet, to reduce the risk of them getting any to us.
2. Be nice and not use nukes on them, and use conventional weapons instead. But Pakistan manages to get off a nuke in response.
3. Be nice and not use nukes on them, and use conventional weapons instead. Pakistan does not get off a nuke.
If we choose option 1, then people will scream that we should have gone with scenario 3, that Pakistan was "never" going to nuke us.
If scenario 2 plays out, people will be screaming that we should have chosen option 1.
If scenario 3 were to play out, that would be the best option. But it's really tough. We can't predict that. It's probably safer to go with option 1. But even that isn't certain. There's no certainty. We can only do our best. If scenario 2 plays out, we should definitely nuke them in response, so that the next people who try this on won't repay our kindness with nukes.
This is the dilemma that we face. It's far more important than Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda will keep to another day. They will do a minor amount of damage in the meantime. If we can get the state actors over to our side, we can then start dealing with non-state actors like Al Qaeda. Actually, we can tackle both problems at the same time, which is indeed exactly what is happening. Maybe that is what people don't understand. The main game, geostrategy, was going on long before Al Qaeda reared its head. The process of dealing with individual criminals (or an unusual grouping of them like Al Qaeda was), is something that goes on within Australia already. No-one really knows how to stop criminals. It's what we have police for though. It's not something for the military to deal with.
That's basically all the threats in the world at the moment. Eventually we want to have institutions set up so that America can't one day decide to conquer or blackmail the world. But countering a theoretical risk from the leader of the free world is an issue for another day, and I only include it because at the end of the day we need to dot our Is and cross our Ts. So that the world looks nice with checks and balances, and we can explain to everyone that their human rights are protected as much as we can possibly think of.
But really, it's time to ban the bomb! At least the enemy bombs! It was the commies who tried to ban just the free world's bombs, for obvious reasons. And I'm trying to do the exact opposite, as I was then, for equally obvious reasons.
Note that these threats to the free world from state and non-state actors are purely security issues. The task of liberating the world is separate. However, the two things normally get combined, as they should. The obvious people to free are the ones who are enslaved by one of our enemies. To kill two birds with one stone. And the most strategic country to free right at this moment in history is Iran. It will be strategic in December. Not now. We need to see how the Iraqi security forces handle themselves when they take over in November. If we leave now, we'll spoil the experiment. And the results of that experiment are an important future reference.
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"And this is where I see the problem in today's world. Back in the 1930's, Hitler needed a powerful and well disciplined military, a good economy, a fanatized population, and a strong backcountry in order to wreak the havoc he indeed did. Fast forward to the early 21st century. For our present Hitlers, all of that is not needed since having a setting off a few nukes (irrelevant how it was obtained..., a big and wet kiss for the Dear Leader) will wreak a far worse havoc than Hitler did. The bar to set the world on fire has been drasitcally lowered, and this is why the West has to pre-emt the Saddams, the Ayatollahs, and the Dear Leaders.
We cannot wait for them to arrive to our shores. Because if they do, then the first step will be nuking instead of landing what the West can easily fight back.
Vilmos Soti"
Hopefully the fact that this was written by someone other than me will increase the chances of Joe Bloggs being able to actually understand it. However, here begins my own attempt at explaining the strategic situation in the world today.
First of all, our ancestors really stuffed up. After Nazi Germany was defeated, they should have immediately demanded the Soviet Union leave Eastern Europe. In fact, they should have demanded democratization and demilitarization of the USSR, the same as Japan got. The USSR actually started WWII. It wasn't just the Germans alone. They did it together.
Anyway, the past is the past. We need to deal with the mess we inherited rather than cry over spilt milk. The fact is that our ancestors let the enemy acquire nukes. Until those nukes have actually been rounded up and collected, we may still be hit by one or more. The danger is far from over. Russia, China and Pakistan have the nukes of greatest concern. The Russian ones are in the hands of someone who is obnoxious and scowls a lot, rather than an actual enemy, and probably not that much different from the French ones. The Chinese ones would potentially be used against us in a showdown over Taiwan, but we can probably avoid that conflict, and the Chinese don't really appear to be hostile. They seem to be interested in western consumer goods rather than trying to cause us harm. I'm not greatly concerned about them either.
The ones in Pakistan however, could be used not just against India, which is part of the free world (although historically completely immoral, allying with the Soviet Union during the Cold War), but against other members of the free world. We need to collect them. This is actually the largest threat in the world today. Al Qaeda is just a joke. It has limited ability to do harm. It is state actors with nukes that we need to be concerned about. And obviously stop state actors like Iran and North Korea from obtaining them in the first place. Until the nukes are collected, and without the ability to see into the future, we don't yet know how many nukes will strike the free world before the enemy's nukes are eliminated. It's bloody tough to get them too.
A tough calculation needs to be made to decide how to work through this minefield. These enemy countries could directly or indirectly unleash their nukes at any time. We'll never know for sure the absolute best way to get our hands on them. We can only do our best with the information we have available. The calculation with a country like Iran is quite straightforward. We can get to their nukes before they get to them themselves. To get to Pakistan's nukes, we have the following scenarios:
1. Nuke that country off the planet, to reduce the risk of them getting any to us.
2. Be nice and not use nukes on them, and use conventional weapons instead. But Pakistan manages to get off a nuke in response.
3. Be nice and not use nukes on them, and use conventional weapons instead. Pakistan does not get off a nuke.
If we choose option 1, then people will scream that we should have gone with scenario 3, that Pakistan was "never" going to nuke us.
If scenario 2 plays out, people will be screaming that we should have chosen option 1.
If scenario 3 were to play out, that would be the best option. But it's really tough. We can't predict that. It's probably safer to go with option 1. But even that isn't certain. There's no certainty. We can only do our best. If scenario 2 plays out, we should definitely nuke them in response, so that the next people who try this on won't repay our kindness with nukes.
This is the dilemma that we face. It's far more important than Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda will keep to another day. They will do a minor amount of damage in the meantime. If we can get the state actors over to our side, we can then start dealing with non-state actors like Al Qaeda. Actually, we can tackle both problems at the same time, which is indeed exactly what is happening. Maybe that is what people don't understand. The main game, geostrategy, was going on long before Al Qaeda reared its head. The process of dealing with individual criminals (or an unusual grouping of them like Al Qaeda was), is something that goes on within Australia already. No-one really knows how to stop criminals. It's what we have police for though. It's not something for the military to deal with.
That's basically all the threats in the world at the moment. Eventually we want to have institutions set up so that America can't one day decide to conquer or blackmail the world. But countering a theoretical risk from the leader of the free world is an issue for another day, and I only include it because at the end of the day we need to dot our Is and cross our Ts. So that the world looks nice with checks and balances, and we can explain to everyone that their human rights are protected as much as we can possibly think of.
But really, it's time to ban the bomb! At least the enemy bombs! It was the commies who tried to ban just the free world's bombs, for obvious reasons. And I'm trying to do the exact opposite, as I was then, for equally obvious reasons.
Note that these threats to the free world from state and non-state actors are purely security issues. The task of liberating the world is separate. However, the two things normally get combined, as they should. The obvious people to free are the ones who are enslaved by one of our enemies. To kill two birds with one stone. And the most strategic country to free right at this moment in history is Iran. It will be strategic in December. Not now. We need to see how the Iraqi security forces handle themselves when they take over in November. If we leave now, we'll spoil the experiment. And the results of that experiment are an important future reference.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 15:26 
