Eutrusca
16-12-2004, 14:43
Can you imagine...
One all-too-realistic geopolitical nightmare includes a weapon of
mass destruction terrorist attack on the U.S. West Coast. A nuclear
device detonates in a container ship about to enter Long Beach,
Calif. News had just broken about pollution of the U.S. food supply,
most analysts assumed by transnational terrorism. The U.S. can
prevail conventionally 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 governing Iraq collapses and civil war
breaks out between Sunnis and Shi'ites.
• Fear of the unknown produces a new consensus in the U.S. that
global civilization is no longer America's business.
• The U.S. debate shifts to adequate city perimeter defenses.
• With the U.S. 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 on their own.
Congress abolishes global aid.
• Egypt loses its annual stipend of $2.5 billion; Taiwan and
Israel are told they will must fend for themselves.
• Social trust becomes the new glue of society — bonding with
like-minded neighbors with shared 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-Saharan
Africa'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 self-protection core
against dysfunctional neighbors with no upward mobility.
• The European Union and Russia, in continuing decline, close
ranks; 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,
form a de facto alliance.
• Pakistan's pro-American President Pervez Musharraf does not
survive the ninth assassination plot; an Islamist general takes over
and appoints A.Q. Khan, former chief executive 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 and is welcomed as a
national hero. Bin Laden scores an overwhelming plurality in the
elections and is the country's most popular leader.
• A.Q. Khan sends bin Laden his congratulations and dispatches
to Riyadh 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. His mission is to negotiate a
caliphate merging Pakistan's nuclear weapons with Saudi oil
resources and monetary reserves.
• Northern Nigeria petitions Islamabad and Riyadh to be
considered as a member of the caliphate.
• Absent the long-time global cop, and traditional alliances in
shambles, transnational criminal enterprises thrive with unfettered
access the world over.
• U.S. multinational companies, unable to protect their plants
and employees, return whence they came.
• International airlines morph back into interregional air
links.
• Switzerland, a small defensive country with compulsory
military service, is in vogue again; larger countries with several
ethnic groups begin breaking apart 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 roam
freely and hungry in the rest of Europe. Islamist radicals sally out
of their European slum tenements to besiege U.S. Embassies in
protest of their jobless plight.
• Japan goes nuclear after U.S. troops withdraw from South
Korea.
One all-too-realistic geopolitical nightmare includes a weapon of
mass destruction terrorist attack on the U.S. West Coast. A nuclear
device detonates in a container ship about to enter Long Beach,
Calif. News had just broken about pollution of the U.S. food supply,
most analysts assumed by transnational terrorism. The U.S. can
prevail conventionally 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 governing Iraq collapses and civil war
breaks out between Sunnis and Shi'ites.
• Fear of the unknown produces a new consensus in the U.S. that
global civilization is no longer America's business.
• The U.S. debate shifts to adequate city perimeter defenses.
• With the U.S. 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 on their own.
Congress abolishes global aid.
• Egypt loses its annual stipend of $2.5 billion; Taiwan and
Israel are told they will must fend for themselves.
• Social trust becomes the new glue of society — bonding with
like-minded neighbors with shared 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-Saharan
Africa'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 self-protection core
against dysfunctional neighbors with no upward mobility.
• The European Union and Russia, in continuing decline, close
ranks; 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,
form a de facto alliance.
• Pakistan's pro-American President Pervez Musharraf does not
survive the ninth assassination plot; an Islamist general takes over
and appoints A.Q. Khan, former chief executive 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 and is welcomed as a
national hero. Bin Laden scores an overwhelming plurality in the
elections and is the country's most popular leader.
• A.Q. Khan sends bin Laden his congratulations and dispatches
to Riyadh 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. His mission is to negotiate a
caliphate merging Pakistan's nuclear weapons with Saudi oil
resources and monetary reserves.
• Northern Nigeria petitions Islamabad and Riyadh to be
considered as a member of the caliphate.
• Absent the long-time global cop, and traditional alliances in
shambles, transnational criminal enterprises thrive with unfettered
access the world over.
• U.S. multinational companies, unable to protect their plants
and employees, return whence they came.
• International airlines morph back into interregional air
links.
• Switzerland, a small defensive country with compulsory
military service, is in vogue again; larger countries with several
ethnic groups begin breaking apart 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 roam
freely and hungry in the rest of Europe. Islamist radicals sally out
of their European slum tenements to besiege U.S. Embassies in
protest of their jobless plight.
• Japan goes nuclear after U.S. troops withdraw from South
Korea.