[EnergyUnlimited]

There is another choice that has been overlooked. Genocide. We have biological agents now that can be targeted with great specificity. Be it crops or people. And it is nearly impossible to pin such a thing on the perpetrator.

Somehow I doubt it.
Biological agents are ineffective and taking long time to work.
If highly contagious diseases are used, then they will almost certainly run out of control and affect enemy together with your own peoples.

And if you have used anthrax or smallpox then it would be an obvious act.

In respect of crop damage it is likely that major powers would apply precautionary principle.

So if for example Chinese crops are failing and some GM fungal disease which appeared out of blue is pinpointed as a cause, then it is very likely that some different fungal disease would affect American crops, especially once Chinese laboratory tests have shown that American varieties are resistant to disease affecting Chinese crops.

[ReverseEngineer]

Biological agents are ineffective and taking long time to work.
If highly contagious diseases are used, then they will almost certainly run out of control and affect enemy together with your own peoples.

I agree with EU on this point.

Biological weapons, if sufficiently lethal are simply too hard to control and too likely to affect the population of the side that lets such a thing loose in the environmment also. Its a MAD problem of its own.

If TPTB could have developed a highly targeted infectious organism they could control and unleashed it on the world without it endangering themselves, I am pretty sure they would have done this already. They have certainly been working on this for years, since before WWI actually. Like the investment into Fusion Power, at least half the investment into Genetic Research comes from the Defense Dept and the Military Industrial Complex. since the day that Alfred Nobel invented Dynamite, the goal of having the best weapon has always been worth a LOT of money, it of course keeps you in control MAKING that money. Actually it of course goes back a whole lot further than that, to the development of the first Spears and Atlatls, but we can stick to the modern weapons here for the purposes of this thread.

Biological weapons are a Loose Cannon, nobody can control them. Avian Flu is a good example, you just don't know when this one will mutate to a form easily transmissible through humans. Eventually, it just about has to happen, given how many birds are currently infected and how many people depend on eating birds as a source of protein and the population density of China, where the problem remains at its greatest for NOW.

Whether it is Avian Flu or a directed Biological Weapon (which Avian Flu MIGHT be), once it is let loose in Mother Nature's world, even the Rockefellers could not stop it from mutating. Like the old TV Commercial said, "You don't MESS with Mother Nature". She holds ALL the cards, and she can shut us all down in the blink of an eye when we mess with her too much. Just look at the Polar Ice Cap. TPTB messed with that one, and now good chance that one takes us all down anyhow, but I do not think at this point they could release an infectious agent sufficiently virulent to be worthwhile as a military instrument and still protect themselves. Its one thing that still remains past our ability to control, fortunately.

Reverse Engineer

[evilgenius]

If there is going to be wholesale war, that is to say a next world war, it will be a nuclear war. That is my opinion and I haven't seen any arguments strong enough that say otherwise. To accept anything else at this point I feel would be too Amerocentric.

Yes, RdSnt, the missile boats are the key. The boomers are the only thing holding back the tide on so many scenarios. If it was up to me I would never let a situation develop where the US did not have enough of them out at sea at any given time to fully retaliate, but that is just me. I understand from articles I have read over the years that there is tremendous pressure to bring the Trident missile boats back into port and keep them there in order to save money. I think that is the kind of thinking that invited Pearl Harbor.

Putting the Nuke Subs in dry dock where they could be taken out in a first strike is plain stupid, but they do not have to be cruising the ocean either with a full crew. You park them a few miles offshore with a skeleton crew in 300 feet of water, they will be quite safe. There are money saving options here that do not require dry dock.

Also, you do have your "Wargames" issue. If the Ruskies set off ICBMs, they would appear on the radar in plenty of time to fire back in equal numbers. You could not make a first strike in either direction without the other side having time to fire back before impact.

Reverse Engineer

You have about twenty minutes if the Russians launch a massive first strike. That is almost enough time to tell the president and get him to get his face out of his copy of 'My Pet Goat', in the current case or out of an important meeting in the future case. Only the US president can authorize retaliation. The timeframe cuts it close, especially if the first strike comes completely unexpected. After twenty minutes you lose two legs of the triad and have only the missile boats left to retaliate with.

[EnergyUnlimited]

You have about twenty minutes if the Russians launch a massive first strike. That is almost enough time to tell the president and get him to get his face out of his copy of 'My Pet Goat', in the current case or out of an important meeting in the future case. Only the US president can authorize retaliation. The timeframe cuts it close, especially if the first strike comes completely unexpected. After twenty minutes you lose two legs of the triad and have only the missile boats left to retaliate with.

My belief is that a concept of President as the only person capable to authorize retaliation is a theory and PR exercise only.

[highlander]

Assuming the purpose of the war is to acquire resources, there are only two paths to victory

annihilation
genocide

there are two ways to accomplish these in a scale large enough to be successful

nuclear
biological

otherwise, like WWI, nothing is settled

Lets say someone sets off a half dozen "suitcase" nucs in the US

Our economy is in shambles
we will likely have no "state" to counter attack
but we still remain a country of some 300 million.

Lets say we decide it the evil muslims.
we kill every one in the world
We still have China, India, Russia, US and most of Europe
we still have resource issues.

The only viable option is for 2-3 big boys to knock each other completely out of the resource markets

Since China, India and Europe are already resource poor, I vote them off the island

That leaves the spoils to the US and Russia

WE should have a couple hundred good years left between us.

[RedStateGreen]

To wage war you need supply and transport.

What are we using for the energy for this? We have the SPR, and probably the military has its own secret stash. Nuclear powered navy, sure, but everything else runs on oil.

I think we're looking at a very narrow timeline for waging conventional war just from the peak oil standpoint, and countries that do so are really just shooting themselves in the foot, because others can sit back and keep their oil stockpiles for their own use at a later date.

I'm guessing that we'll never leave Iraq. This was meant as a beach head for later control of the oil fields, and that Bush was doing exactly as he was supposed to in the grand scheme. We'll set up refineries, and use the oil there to finance further wars (most of them by proxy) in the Middle East and around the Caspian.

This will mean we won't need to spend a lot of oil moving large numbers of troops overseas, as many can be just moved from bases in Europe and Asia by rail as needed. Obama has already mentioned something like this (Iraq to Afghanistan, at least) How many hundreds of thousands of our troops are overseas already?

When I first heard that Bush wanted to invade Iraq I knew there had to be a reason for it that wasn't being said. I didn't know about peak oil at the time, but the invasion makes a lot more sense now.

(I think a land grab is stupid and immoral, but it makes sense if your goal is to 'try and take over the world' ala Pinky and the Brain.)

[Kaj]

Is anyone else worried about the potential for weather warfare?

Both the US and Russia apparently have the technology to play about with the atmosphere.

Worth checking out.

BAES was involved in the development of the advanced stage of the HAARP antenna array under a 2004 contract with the Office of Naval Research. The installation of 132 highfrequency transmitters was entrusted by BAES to its US subsidiary, BAE Systems Inc. The project, according to a July report in Defense News, was undertaken by BAES’s Electronic Warfare division. In September it received DARPA’s top award for technical achievement for the design, construction and activation of the HAARP array of antennas.

If some of the hearsay about its potential is true, then there is a possibility that that Russia and/or America might use the technology to compound China's coming drought problems and/or direct flash-floods to destroy crops or similar.

[Kaj]

My analysis is that US strategic planners want to destroy Russia and to neuter China (before it too becomes a threat).

But also China and Russia are natural enemies while they do not feel threatened by the US. While they feel do feel threatened, they are natural friends.
Putin was happy for an alliance with the US until he realised that the US cold war encirclement policy hadn't actually ended.

So anyway it is a nice little hate triangle that is very hard to predict.

[35Kas]

There will be no War. What will progressively happen is that the powers that be will exploit and invade the lesser nations that cannot defend themselves.

Why would China, Russia, USA , India and EU fight each other to death with so much destruction when they cam simply spill over into the periphery of the world.

All those underdeveloped nations filled with natural resources and so much potential, so much lebensraum. Only too crowded with their hopeless masses and intricate socioeconomic disorders to bother in the present day.

Only that when push comes to shove and juice is squeezed dry, those that have the power and those that are commanded will forgo their complacent love-all attitude with the less fortunate and take the only sensible solution left (because self-sacrifice and prudence were thrown out long ago when all was too plenty and easy to bother) when they themselves are facing hunger, unemployment and deprivation.

I know there will be no great battles over the oceans and heroic last stands in the continents. All that will happen is a more intensified and grotesque replay of human history.

There will be no Defense of Moscow, there will be the progressive starvation and self-destruction of nations like Cameroon and Mexico, which will be "saved" by peacekeeping forces (and have their resources "taken care of", to be saved from the societal collapses, or terrorists).

There will be no Muslim Insurrection, there will be increasingly more violent and hardliner puppet regimes that will go to any lengths in in order to protect their self-interest at the Cost of the Many.

There will be no D-Day, there will be an O-day when the Oil fields of Venezuela are liberated by an overwhelming show of force by the Marines and the Gator navy, supported by the DoD terminator drones filling the land and air, cunning precision and unrelenting inhumanity.

There will be no Nuclear Armageddon*, for these weapons (and other scourge of biotech) will only be used upon those that are defenseless to stop them, much less retaliate in any significant manner.

When all the fat has been cut off the flesh, even then annihilation will finally be discarded in favor of Common Sense.




*I am very unsure the Indian Sub-continent will support human life within 20 years.