Disturbing Visions

DO YOU THINK WE HAVE PROBLEMS NOW, with a banking system supported by government, a government supported by debt, and debt supported by Chinese and Japanese central banks? Wait until you see the problems presented by a "military futurist" named Andrew F. Krepinevich.

We almost said, "the problems dreamed up" by this West Point grad and Harvard Ph.D., who served 21 years in the Army and now is a consultant. But he didn't dream up these nightmares. We all know they could happen, but we are looking the other way.

Krepinevich's book, Seven Deadly Scenarios, leaves the reader with a very bad feeling about the future. America had better cure its financial problems soon, because any of the catastrophes imagined in the book would be very expensive to repair.

Below is the Cliff’s Notes version. I’m not impressed, I could come up with WAY scarier scenarios.

“The Collapse of Pakistan” scenario takes almost no imagination. Pakistan is not far from civil war now, with a divided army, ethnic fragmentation, anarchy in the tribal areas, a collapsing export economy failing to earn payments for imported food and, of course, nuclear weapons.

“War Comes to America” reads like an episode of the TV serial 24, with atomic bombs destroying downtowns in San Antonio, Chicago, San Diego and Boston over a period of two months.

“Pandemic” presumes that the worst fears about the bird flu come true; we lack an effective treatment or adequate vaccine for a virus as transmissible and deadly as that of the great influenza epidemic of 1918.

The “Armageddon” scenario does not take us to the Book of Revelation, which pictures the last battle between good and evil. This Armageddon involves a new war between Iranian-backed Palestinians and the Israeli defense forces.

“China’s ‘Assassin’s Mace’” propounds a gross misunderstanding of intentions and interests over Taiwan, with a blockade and counter-blockade.

“Just-Not-In-Time” is a scenario directly focused on economic disruption. Local militants disrupt oil production in Nigeria. Others sink a supertanker and block the Strait of Malacca between Indonesia and Malaysia, and destroy offshore oil platforms in Indonesia.

“Who Lost Iraq?” postulates a breakup of Iraq after U.S. forces leave,

“War Comes to America” reads like an episode of the TV serial 24, with atomic bombs destroying downtowns in San Antonio, Chicago, San Diego and Boston over a period of two months.

Can bombs be made with no signature? Of course they can these days. So who would we attack in the aftermath
These are smuggled in bombs. Detonation on the 24th floor of a high rise would be a good plan. Or a van on a bridge

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