Wednesday, June 4, 2014

West ponders how to stop or fight a new great war


U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises in Pohang, South Korea, on March 31, 2014 (AP)

West ponders how to stop or fight a new great war

After more than a decade focused on combating Islamist militancy, Western military planners have a new focus.  Russia, China, more » 















West ponders how to stop - or fight - a new Great War


Reuters


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Obama to urge Congress on boosting support for NATO allies

Obama to urge Congress on boosting support for NATO allies
Although the Cold War rivalry with Moscow has never been forgotten, current and former Western officials say Russia's annexation of Crimea has NATO powers tearing up strategic assumptions and grimly considering both conventional and nuclear fights.
As late as March, most NATO powers - with the exception of eastern members such as the Baltic States long worried by Moscow - had assumed Europe itself faced no imminent military threat.
It is still the case that few believe Russia would attack any NATO state, but, in order to deter, Western officials say they must consider and plan for the contingency.
The threat to U.S. allies in the Pacific from a stronger China has also focused military minds on how to contain the risks there, and ensure any localized conflict does not spill over into global war.
In a major foreign policy speech at the West Point military academy last month, President Barack Obama spoke mostly on counterterrorism and the Afghanistan withdrawal. But while he said the risk from other nations was now much lower than before the Berlin Wall fell, he made clear it still existed.
"Regional aggression that goes unchecked, whether in southern Ukraine or the South China Sea or anywhere else in the world, will ultimately impact our allies and could draw in our military," he told graduating cadets.
Tensions with Moscow and Beijing have increased faster than almost anyone in government in Washington expected. They are expected to dominate a meeting between Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Normandy for the 70th anniversary of D-Day later this week.
Last weekend's annual Shangri-La Dialogue strategic conference in Singapore, meanwhile, showcased the growing gulf between Washington and Beijing on issues from regional maritime disputes to cyber security.
In recent weeks, current and former officials say, the Obama administration has been insistently reassuring allies and signaling foes where Washington's true red lines are.
Washington might not be prepared to act militarily in Ukraine but an attack on a NATO state such as one of the Baltics or a formal Asian ally like Japan, the Philippines or Australia would commit it irrevocably to war. Those treaty obligations are not new, but U.S. officials say it is important to make clear that they are taken extremely seriously.
They hope that will reduce the risk of an accidental war where a state takes action wrongly assuming other powers will not respond.
"It's not that the leadership in Russia or China is looking for a war - and the United States certainly isn't," says Kathleen Hicks, a U.S. undersecretary for defense until last July who now works for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"The real worry is miscalculation."
GREAT WAR
One hundred years after the start of World War One, books on the period have become increasingly popular in Washington, Whitehall and NATO headquarters in Brussels, current and former officials say, and not purely for their historical interest.
In June 1914, the killing of Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb nationalist triggered actions and alliances that brought war in barely a month.
Now, experts say flashpoints could range from a clash over disputed South China Sea islands or ethnic strife in Russia's former Soviet neighbors to a wrongly attributed cyber attack.
Even as Washington reassures allies, Moscow and Beijing have asserted their might against Ukraine and Vietnam which lack such formal alliances. The risk, experts say, is that they become overconfident and misjudge.
"The parallels with 1914 can definitely be overstated," said Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the U.S. Naval War College.
"But they do show us that war can start through unintended consequences and an economically interdependent world does not necessarily stop it from happening."
As in 1914, no one really knows what a modern great war would be like.
While much military thinking assumes conflict would remain conventional, nuclear powers have kept their atomic war planning up to date, maintaining target lists for mutually assured destruction, current and former officials say.
Cyber attacks, some experts say, could be almost as destructive, as could the effects on global trade in an unprecedentedly interconnected world.
Meanwhile, some of the systems supposed to prevent conflict may be starting to weaken.
WEAKENED LINKS
U.S. officials had embarked on a campaign to build formal and informal communications channels with Beijing, mimicking the hotlines and procedures set up with Russia.
Moscow and Washington have used those systems themselves in recent months to notify each other of missile tests and reconnaissance flights over each other's territory.
Links with Russia, however, have weakened this year as NATO states canceled conferences and military exchanges with Moscow in protest at the annexation of Crimea.
Contacts with China have also deteriorated in the last month, particularly since Washington indicted five Chinese officials for cyber espionage, a charge Beijing denies.
A near collision between U.S. and Chinese warships in January, a mock Russian attack on a U.S. destroyer in the Black Sea in April and periodic confrontations between long-range bombers and other aircraft show the risks, experts warn.
Last week on Japan and China accused each other of "dangerous" and "over the top" actions after warplanes came within a few dozen meters.
Any additional challenge to the West, some analysts say, is that both Russia and China know Washington would struggle to handle simultaneous confrontations.
U.S. forces are spread around the world while Moscow's and Beijing's, while smaller, are almost exclusively focused on their immediate neighborhood. Since 2008, they have increased military spending 30 and 40 percent respectively, according to London's International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The 2012 Asia "pivot", which saw the U.S. Navy in particular moving to increase its Pacific footprint, aimed to make crisis response easier.
In Europe, in contrast, NATO has little developed thinking beyond its post-Crimea strategy of putting small numbers of U.S. troops and jets on the frontline in eastern member states they fear Moscow might target next.
Until Ukraine, European states had viewed their primary military focus as occasional intervention, peacekeeping and counterinsurgency in the Middle East and Africa.
"We are in uncharted territory," said one senior Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It means ... reconstituting high end fighting skills and properly thought through doctrine for both conventional and nuclear deterrence."
(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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West ponders how to stop or fight a new great war

Yes. I agree and how much have Russia and China already invaded our country through the Internet that we don't know about? And how much have we already invaded theirs? This might be important if our weapons or theirs don't work when anyone wants them to because of this.

This is a much more interdependent world than we lived in in the 1930s and we have nukes and the internet and GPS satellites too. What if we or they destroyed the network of GPS satellites so no missiles could be fired and navigate to their targets from any country because the north pole is moving 40 miles a year now and likely might not be counted on for navigation much?

These are only some of the questions that I would ask. Most of these fancy gadgets we plan to use in war won't work without GPS satellites. And if the Internet worldwide suddenly went down world wide what would that do to commerce in every nation on earth?

IN an interdependent world all the major economies would just stop right now without the Internet. Everyone but a few third world nations couldn't function without GPS and the Internet. Civilization might basically end in most civilizations without GPS and the Internet and phones. And All 5 billion cell phones would stop working without GPS satellites too. The whole world is very vulnerable right now to war.

For example, without the INternet and GPS satellites, food would not be shipped. Planes could not fly (passenger planes) without running into each other. Ships would have problems (large ones navigating unless they used a sextant). Self driving cars could not operate. Etc. ETc. Etc.  And no cell phones or smart phones would work anymore.

The war we envision likely would end civilization on earth the first day even without nuclear weapons. It would take us back to the 1940s through the 1960s in life and because of the number of people millions and possibly billions would die in the chaos that would result just in the next year or so. The governments of China and Russia likely would collapse if not the U.S. and EU too in a situation like this over the next year or years as millions starved to death without enough food. This is the real story of what a war could be like if nuclear weapons weren't used. But, the problem is when civilization ends on that day, nuclear weapons would be used eventually from hysterical people  and then civilization would end. And we would return eventually so something like life was somewhere between the time of Christ and the 1700s as a direct result within 20 to 50 years. But, by then there would be only about 1 billion or less people still alive on earth.

And most countries wouldn't survive it and neither would their governments.

However, if the U.S. detonated one 100 megaton hydrogen bomb 100 miles above Russia and one above China also at 100 miles up everything electrical would stop working in both countries. But, what would you have then but even more starving people than are there already? And everyone within 10 feet of anything metal would be dead. And the rest would be really pissed off.

Other than that solution I really don't see one that would work at present.

So, what we are left with are solutions about 100 times worse than we faced at the beginning of World War II. 

Either we all learn to live together or we are all incinerated together. There doesn't seem to be another choice. But, we are humans and look at human history and  how we screwed it all up in the past.

Christmas Eve a few years ago now God woke me up and had me begin to write the following story about what happens if a 100 megaton hydrogen bomb is detonated 100 miles above the exact middle of the lower 48 states in the U.S. 

Just click on the word button EMP above if you want to read it.

 

 

 

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