Yesterday, Roger suggested that a Civil War could be the next major conflict in which the US is involved. After a great deal of thought, I think not. Here’s my logic: if Trump can get within ten million votes or so in the 2024 election, he will simply be appointed President. Many parts of the machine to allow that are being put in place now.
Fox News likes to pretend equivalence between the left & right in America. Antifa is described as this violent movement that is dedicated to the destruction of the Republic. As I understand it, Antifa has no website, no leadership, no members, and no structure. It’s just some guys running around in black t-shirts. Moreover, despite what it looks like on TV, there are not that many of them.
There is no leader on the left who fills up stadiums and holds rallies. No national group will stand down and stand by. No state groups are getting orders from national organizations. In other words, the far left is not organized the way the far right is.
If you accept that the left is not organized and doesn’t embrace gun culture, then you must accept that a Civil War is unlikely. If The Donald is not in serious legal trouble he will most likely run, and most likely lose, and most likely claim the election was stolen (again), and this time be appointed President.
There will be many, many largely peaceful protests with a few bad actors in black t-shirts who will take to the streets after sunset. Fox News will, again, be reduced to making a huge, six-month thing out of some broken windows and a touched car or two. “Our cities are burning!!!!”
On the other hand, should a centrist or liberal win, there really could be some trouble. There are a number of militias which are armed and believe the last election was stolen. Ronald Regan and William F. Buckley have been replaced by Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson. Respectful, fact driven debate will play no part in any post-election conversation; neither will the votes of the people. However, I doubt these self-described militias want to conduct any business with the US Army, so no civil war.
My country’s next war
Recently Joe Biden met Vladimir Putin, as many experts think, to avoid Russia invading the Ukraine and setting it on fire.
People here are afraid of the war; still, Putin is not a lunatic. Technically, the Russian army could destroy Ukraine’s military and occupy the country, except for its Western regions. Yes, at a cost of thousand lives which itself is not a popular thing in Russia. The question is: what to do with the occupied but fiercely hostile country. There’s no way to control it.
This is why I’m sure Russia’s next war is not the Ukraine. There would be no war in this direction: Russia just has not enough resources to implement it. If it had, Putin would have made the invasion already; he is a pragmatic. He wouldn’t bother talking to any US President on this issue like he does now.
So, no war in the Ukraine. Good enough.
But what will it be then?
The thing is that Russia has many wars to fight at the same time. War on poverty – hey, hey, LBJ. War on drugs, hello, Mr. Reagan. War on HIV. War on Covid-19 as the vaccination program is fucked up in many ways here. People just don’t trust the authorities and even if the Sputnik V vaccine is effective enough, they just don’t get vaccinated because it has been developed by them. Remember, Putin doesn’t let the Western vaccines in; he doesn’t really care that people who don’t get vaccinated with the Sputnik V might do it with Pfizer or Moderna. He thinks of it as of some ‘mutual recognition’ thing, something to do with the politics, not public health.
Finally, war on bad ecology, including garbage utilization.
The next Russian leader would have to set the priorities and choose which war to fight out of those above-mentioned options. To succeed, he or she must choose the winnable war.
My country’s next war……
There are many places around our poor old corrupt, Covid-infected planet where military flare-ups are just waiting to happen. And it’s all a bit different to when I was growing up in the fifties and sixties. Back then it was a simple bipolar world; you had just the two blocs of the Soviet Union, and the West. After that, it became more unipolar, with the might of the U.S.A. in complete charge as it seemed to dominate proceedings.
Nowadays, according to the head of the U.K. armed forces, we are into a period where it’s more multi-polar, with countries competing for different objectives and on different agendas, with a greater risk of tension. General Sir Nick Carter issued a double whammy; “There is a risk of a new world war if current, smaller conflicts escalate out of control, drawing in more countries and weapons, and the global economic crisis caused by the pandemic could also trigger war.”
My country is probably ill-equipped to go to war at this time, with the U.K. government failing to issue a multi-year budget settlement which would enable the military to make long-term investments needed to modernise. After all, it’s only short-term bribes that will get this Conservative party re-elected. Sod the safety of the country and its people. But I digress.
Where is war most likely? Russia is about to invade Ukraine; China could walk into Taiwan at any time; The Israeli Air Force are practicing to level Iran’s nuclear capability, and close to where I live, the eastern Mediterranean is providing both Greece and Turkey with sufficient ammunition to fuel their ever-increasing hatred for each other. (As an aside, with the world threatening to disintegrate before our very eyes, the U.K.’s opposition party, Labour, is getting itself into a paddy about a party at Downing Street a year ago. No, you simply couldn’t make this up…)
But, following a deep conversation with big brother Henry last night, where we chose not to chat about the cricket as our dear old England were getting battered out of sight by those pesky Aussies, we plumped for China as our next opponent in a war situation.
The Chinese, and by that I mean their government, not their lovely people, are really adept at stealing other country’s secrets. That’s despite Britain, in the guise of that pratt politician George Osborne, selling our country out to the Chinese as if that was the new fashion to be adopted by all. Nuclear power, and telecommunications just two of our possessions lapped up by the enemy, which make no mistake, China is.
Brother Henry reckons Osborne should have been charged with treason, and I would go further. Hung drawn and quartered seems pretty fair to me.
It may well be that this war will be fought in Cyber-space rather than in traditional battlefields. But no matter what, it will be fought; the Chinese (government) consider themselves superior to everyone else around the globe; they are simply horrible racist hooligans with a genuine desire to rule and dominate us all.
China is Britain’s next opponent in the ring. You read it first here.