CHANGING NATURE OF WAR

Much of the following is excerpted from "Conversations with Casey" March 24, 2010

wherein doug Casey was interviewed by Louis James, editor of the International speculator .

The nature of warfare is changing. It is said that we are always preparing for the last war, and certainly to use tanks and B52 bombers against ubiquitous civilian populations that may or may not contain terrorists is pretty foolish, but generals will be generals and not necessarily realists.

Casey postulates that "Terrorism, as a method of warfare, is definitely the wave of the future. . . Terrorism is also extremely cost-effective – and anyone can use it, with or without training or experience.

It's been called "open-source warfare," a phrase that seems right on target to me. One terrorist sees what another does, and learns from it. People can invent infinite variations and programs of attack. A failed act of terror, like that of the "shoe bomber" – which couldn't have brought down the plane even if he succeeded, or this recent Nigerian case, is almost as good as a successful one. The government response is, predictably, more destructive than the act itself. Further, terror is massively parallel. There is no "leader" to kill; there are hundreds of heads to the hydra.

Deadly devices, sometimes even with somewhat larger-scale destructive capability, like that backpack full of nails and explosives found during the Atlanta Olympics, can be made with cheap, off-the shelf supplies. And with every attack and attempt, the ideas of how to mount such attacks spread, just like open-source software

only an idiot fails to recognize that in an advanced technological economy an individual can have an immense, disproportionate, effect if he wants to do damage. It's not like in pre-industrial days, when a single person was limited to perhaps setting a fire, or maybe stabbing someone. Today, an individual terrorist can alter the direction of society. And there are hundreds of millions of candidates for that role.

In my view, the trend towards terrorism as the next evolution of warfare is about as certain as they come. It's not just the U.S.; all the big nation-states are on the ragged edge of bankruptcy. Their huge bureaucracies, oppressive tax systems, complicated regulatory regimes, subsidies, bailouts, fiat currencies, and welfare programs are – every one of them – near collapse. They were confidence schemes. It's not just standing armies, but the nation-state itself is a dead man walking at this point.

These giant dinosaur-states are thrashing around in their death-throes, and they are extremely dangerous – at least while they can still pay the salaries of their minions in the police and the military. And that very fact is stirring up a lot of little creatures that are going to want to see them die sooner.

the more villages and such they bomb, the more enemies they make, and those new enemies provoke even more thrashing about, which creates even more enemies, provoking leviathan to even more violent and oppressive responses. It's a vicious cycle that sure seems to be taking the current world order down the spiral towards oblivion.

Today, they talk about Al Qaida being "our enemy." But, first off, Al Qaida isn't a country. You can't invade it, nor capture its capital. It's such a decentralized and amorphous entity, there's simply no military way to defeat it.. . .and now that the U.S. has whacked the hornets' nest, I believe there are now scores, maybe even hundreds, of Al Qaida look-alikes all around the world. They don't take orders from some Al Qaida chief – they watch each other and take ideas from those who pull off successful attacks.. . So, even if the U.S. were to somehow, miraculously, wipe out every living member of Al Qaida today, the idea would continue.

The War on Terror is being fought mainly in Muslim countries. It's not being called a War on Islam, but to the people living in those places, it's increasingly looking like a War on Islam, and the fact that most U.S. allies in the Islamic world are oppressive regimes doesn't help at all. Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Saudi, and Pakistan, among others, are all run by quislings, puppets, or stooges of the U.S. The average citizen of those places despises his corrupt government, and recognizes that the U.S. is propping it up – which gives them good reason to hate the U.S. The demographics in these places are a time bomb – half the population is under 30, and they're mostly unemployed. Many would form terrorist groups out of boredom, except they have much better reasons. The U.S. doesn't have any real friends in those suppressive governments anyway; those people will change sides in a New York second. And it's getting worse.

[Doug Casey has illuminated some areas here for our truth. He does not nor has he encouraged war, conventional or otherwise, but is making some educated guesses about the nature of future war making.]

Osama Bin Laden, told us early on that we would bankrupt ourselves in these futile wars, because there is no end to them, nor the fields of battle. He spelled out three reasons for their resentment:foreign troops in Muslim countries; U.S. support for puppet regimes in Muslim countries; U.S. support of Israel and their oppression of the Palestinians. Our president had explained to us that "they hate our freedom",when in fact they hate our interference and presence their country. You cannot continue to oppress people, with killings kidnapping and torture and expect them to love you.

With Love and Kindness,