Vol. 1, Issue 2 , 15 January 2003

The Great Fallacy

Worldwide fossil fuel reserves continue to be depleted faster than new reserves are discovered. In the coming decades, larger and more deadly conflicts will arise as all nations of the earth, including former allies, battle for the last drops of precious crude just to keep their military-industrial complexes clunking along. Weapons of last resort will be employed as nations become more and more desperate, scrambling over the last scraps of the world's shrunken corpse.

However, the next dominant force on this planet will be the one that utilizes technology not dependent on fossil fuels to power its industry and military. That country's industry will be able to outpace its international rivals, its military will be able to strike at other countries' oil reserves without fear of endangering its own flow of power. If the US military truly wishes to maintain its status as the dominant military on the planet, it cannot continue to rely entirely on a steady supply of petroleum to power its machines of war and the industries that build those machines. It must develop alternative energy sources not dependent on the limited natural resources of any nation or planet, and it must develop them now. The sooner the US military is able to bring this technology online on a massive scale, using it to power its aircraft, sea and land vehicles, the sooner the country as a whole can free itself from the dangerous strategic vulnerability of heavy reliance on petroleum products.

In the wars of the last century, petroleum delivery was proven to be THE most vulnerable line of supply. The Battle of the Bulge stalled because of the German army's inability to seize the Allied fuel dumps necessary to the success of their offensive. Without fuel, their tanks wouldn't run and they couldn't supply their troops in the field. At other times, various parts of the Allied march toward Berlin were stalled or delayed because of limited fuel supplies. At the time, the Allied forces were never in any real danger of completely running out of fuel as the Germans did, but weak lines of fuel supply hampered their war efforts to a significant degree.

In the coming oil wars, these vulnerabilities will be magnified on an enormous scale. Whole nations and economies will be toppled by a single strategic attack on a vital line of supply, the destruction of which will cause irreversible damage because of their already precarious economy. To continue planning our national strategy in expectation of participating in and winning these global wars is the greatest of mistakes if alternative sources of power are not simultaneously developed. Even the winner of the global oil wars will still lose. Nothing can reverse the dwindling supply of oil, and eventually the winner must also succumb to the economics of the situation.

The only way to win is to not participate. And the only way to not participate is to develop alternative sources of power now, before the wars begin, and to build a powerful new military based on this alternative source. A tiny island once dominated the world because it ruled the waves - wind-powered ships and the means to navigate them anywhere on the globe, the most important technologies of their day. The same thing can happen again.

The next dominant global power will be the country that develops these technologies, thus freeing itself from the need to compete for dwindling petroleum resources and allowing its military to act without concern for its own fuel supplies. And rest assured, someone will.

So the question is, why isn't the US military leading the charge to develop alternative power sources?

 

The Christmas Truce

Christmas Day, 1914 (corrected). British, French and German soldiers enjoy a spontaneous truce. Enemies meet in the no-man's land between the trenches to exchange small gifts, sing Christmas carols, play football and bury their dead.

Naturally, their commanders were aghast. The generals knew that such fraternizing among men whose job it was to kill one another could seriously hamper their future ability to kill one another. Such men might decide that it isn't the men in the other trench who are their enemy, rather the men situated miles behind the lines, drinking cognac and schnapps while they suck trench water through their coat sleeves. Or the men even further away, engaging in the great world banking bukkake.

Does my rotting corpse make you horny, Mr. Bildeberg?

But out there in the Flanders fields that Christmas Day, the war was put on hold. That day, humanity had the unprecedented opportunity to break the awful circle that has consumed it since the first cities arose 6,000 years ago. Certainly, those soldiers weren't aware of how the world could change, depending on their decisions that day. And even if they were aware, it's not a given that they could have succeeded in changing the world, or that they would have even tried. The generals were already issuing orders to shoot anyone refusing to fight. They were taking names, even while the soldiers kicked a ball around in the frozen mud and guts.

The generals knew. They knew what was at stake. Their soldiers had declared an unsanctioned peace in the midst of war. They knew that the entire apparatus of civilized warfare hung in the balance. All that needed to happen was for one large group of men to turn around and start for home. The rest of them would soon follow, on both sides, and there was no way they could stop it once the peace began. The soldiers, after all, had all the guns. It was their future to make.

But peace didn't last. The soldiers returned to their trenches and soon the shooting resumed. Once begun, it didn't stop until the Armistice was signed.

That Christmas Day, the soldiers of both great armies had the opportunity to end not just the war, but all war. The generals knew it and they were terrified. But those soldiers had never understood their own power, their own importance. They were taught, as all soldiers are taught, to be cogs in the great machine. They were taught to be cogs without being allowed to see the whole machine and to understand its real power.

Those men could have chosen to walk away. It would have been a difficult if not impossible choice, given their cultural proscriptions. But once chosen, the generals, indeed the governments that created them, would have been utterly powerless to stop them. That is the power of the machine, the one thing the generals and politicians fear more than any foreign enemy - their own armies.

The soldiers weren't aware of what lay before them. They did their duty. They picked up their guns and they fought.

There was never another Christmas Truce. Measures have been taken to prevent another unscripted outbreak of peace.