Apologies to George Ure at Urban Survival for the long excerpt. I can't help it if he's brilliant. - Ed.
Congrats to John Crudele of the NY Post today for getting the story "US Army ready if the Downturn Gets Out of Hand" into this morning's editions.
What's not in the Crudele story is the link which I told you about earlier, to the underlying report itself. Only about 35 pages if you skip the end notes. [pdf report - ed.]
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What's not in the report, and what Crudele probably doesn't have column inches to explore, is something that I'd call "military isolationism." Only takes a few moments to pass on the concept. It goes like this:
A friend of mine (who has occasion to run in high up military circles) hints to me that many of his colleagues in the US military seem to think the dot-mils won't have a major energy problem until somewhere out in the 2040-2050 timeframe. Yet, when my friend did a little probing, it seems there's an underlying recognition that the broader society might not be so fortunate. So much so that even given a long-lasting economic slowdown/Depression, the civilian world would becomes seriously energy constrained by 2020-2025 or so.
Hold that thought and let's go back to the report. What I find key is not so much the specifics of what it says. Rather, it' feels like the beginning of doctrine development that ignores a central point of bifurcation.
Specifically, a military with 'resource to 2050' operating on behalf of a civilian population with constrained resources for 20-25 years sounds (pardon this) a bit elitist at its core. I may be an historic dunderhead, but when one portion of the population has resources, while a larger population doesn't have resources, seems to me you're just setting yourself up for violent conflict.
So when I read Nathan Freier's report and come across a paragraph like this one (taken wholly out of context of the report itself, you understand) I wonder if military elitism, that I believe based on first-hand reports to exist, doesn't in and of itself precipitate violent domestic social conflict?
"Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security. Deliberate employment of weapons of mass destruction or other catastrophic capabilities, unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters are all paths to disruptive domestic shock." (Freier, P. 32)
Or, put more simply, Mao Tse Dung's doctrine that the "...people are like a sea and the guerilla (army) must swim amongst them..." collides conceptually with the super-military necessary to deal with super-threats envisioned in future years. Seems having it both ways is not very likely, nor, no matter how much 'intelligence' spending occurs, can all threats be foreseen. An Iraqi shoe-thrower knows that one.
The matter given scant attention is whether a military can rule a resource constrained world without increasing use of violence to enforce its will (starting since 2000 in case you're not following the lead in here in the headlines), a sort of military feudalism exacting ever higher tribute or whether the military component does best arising spontaneously from and of the people. The path of power versus the path of unity.
So it is that in a paradoxical way, the Founders understood that in preserving the well-armed spontaneous militia capability, the power could remain with we the people.
It's a heavy thought to ponder and decidedly un-Christmasy.
But as you work on developing the bogslife (beyond organizational/governmental structures) mindset, which in many ways is how an arriving alien might view ant farm Earth, such fundamental distinctions become important because the seeds of tomorrow's conflicts were planted in our past and the harvests will be bitter or sweet, depending on how we tend the garden today.
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