THE COMING WORLD WAR

NSFW: This is a frank and informed assessment of how global war could break out. It may be upsetting for some. It is for me.

Imagine the skies over Jerusalem, London, Paris, Oslo, Tokyo or Washington dotted by dozens of drones, each designed to seek out a specific target and substantially damage if not completely destroy it. Now, multiply the number of drones until they are as thick as a swarm of bees or flock of starlings–hundreds of them swooping down, performing impossible maneuvers in the air as they avoid attempts to shoot them down. Some unmanned drones you observe are giants, having more than sixty-foot wing spans, like the Reaper M-9. Others are the size of small birds which do not carry munitions per se, but instead conduct detailed battle damage assessment up close and personal with Go-Pro quality cameras. Next, approaching from another direction, add dozens and dozens of cruise missiles and other ballistic weapons mixed in with the drones. Finally, give each drone or missile the ability to communicate with each other at speeds that exceed your ability to finish this sentence. After this first attack, most of the cities above will be partially or totally destroyed. Rescue workers will have only hours to pull people from the ruins before the next wave of unmanned, robotic machines arrives.

After the fires are out and the bodies are removed, we’ll learn certain lessons when we write our “after action” report. One finding will be that many of these drones were just decoys, designed to cause the British or Americans or the Norwegians to waste and therefore drain their defensive munitions trying to shoot them down. Another point would be the costs involved. An Iranian built, Russian-bought drone that can destroy an apartment building in Kjiv costs about $6,000-$8,000 US. Patriot interceptors capable of shooting down that Iranian-built, Russian-bought drone cost $40,000-$50,000 US each. Plus, some drones are so small that a Patriot missile could not easily intercept it, if it could at all.

Why this topic?

My major in graduate school was International Affairs. I’ve kept up with geopolitics by attending online seminars hosted by the Atlantic Council, the Aspen Institute, Bellingcat and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) since I retired from teaching. I’ve taught terrorism courses and attended workshops for first responders and senior elected representatives hosted by Texas A&M University. I’ve also chaired a large counterterrorism exercise in Texas involving local, state and federal law enforcement and emergency personnel. I’m just a matter of weeks from my 75th birthday, so I’ve lived through many international crises and served in combat for a year in Vietnam, myself, before retiring from the United States Air Force.

One authority that I follow and trust are the Atomic Scientists. This group has developed a graphic to measure how close we are to midnight, when the lights in the world go out, perhaps permanently. Shaped like a clock, this familiar icon was developed in 1947 and initially set to seven minutes before midnight. It first moved towards midnight in 1949 when Russia tested it’s first atomic bomb. Since then, other threats such as environmental and biological catastrophes have caused the minute hand on the clock to move forward or, in rare cases, backwards as when communism fell. The clock was most recently reset last year after Russia invaded Ukraine. At that point, it was moved to ninety seconds before midnight. Since then, the Middle East has flared up: Iran is very close to exploding their first nuclear device, and a number of Western countries such as Hungary, the Netherlands and the U.S. appear to be moving away from democracy toward authoritarian rule (you cannot have both.) And since the Doomsday Clock was reset last year, we have the war in the Middle East and the attacks on international shipping in the Bab el Mandeb straits off the coast of Yemen at the southern part of the Red Sea. The Houthi terrorists there are attacking American warships in those dire straits as well.

And speaking of the Bab el Mandeb, after weeks and weeks of attacks on allied and international shipping (including terrorists boarding ships by helicopter), the U.S. and the U.K struck targets in Yemen. Promising to continue attacks, the Houthi kept their word this week by attacking a U.S. warship and an American container ship yesterday and a Greek ship today. Both civilian ships were hit but manager to stay afloat as they headed for the nearest friendly port. The world is waiting to see what happens next, now that the U.S. or the U.K. have struck targets in Yemen four times in the last week. One thing is for certain. Costs for oil and other imported products will increase as Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, Evergreen and other trans-oceanic companies find safer, but longer and therefore more expensive, routes for their goods. And, insurance on the carriers and the cargo is climbing exponentially with each attack. These steep fees are passed on to the consumers. And that’s not all, according to Cameron Bowie, UK managing director at Hapag-Lloyd. If the Houthis were completely eliminated and:

Even after we’re able to resume going through the Suez Canal, we will have vessels in the wrong place, we will have equipment in the wrong place, we will have challenges to try and get the vessels back into their normal operating rhythm. That is the second wave of concern that we need to manage.”

Likely belligerents

The countries most likely to wind up in a global war are the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, perhaps New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Russia (already at war), The Netherlands, Ukraine (already at war), Iran, Israel (already at war), Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, China, and Taiwan. Also, possibly Poland and other NATO countries under Article V of the North Atlantic Charter, though some countries like France, Turkey, Hungary and Germany won’t like it. Hizbullah will try to draw Lebanon into a conflict, the Houthis will bring war to Yemen and Saudi Arabia and Iran will try to stir up the Shia majority in Iraq. Russia may persuade North Korea to not get involved because North Korea is an important source of munitions for Russia right now. Client states like Syria will be expected to side with Russia and South Africa may be unfriendly to the allies as well for reasons that at the moment remain a mystery to me.

How the Third World War might begin

Let me describe three specific concerns that could push the world into war. Part of what I mention will come from the professional literature and part will be my private opinion. I’ll try to differentiate as I go along.

There are a several current “hotspots” that I’d like to discuss: Russia’s war in Ukraine, Israel and the Palestinians, and China and Taiwan. However, wars often start because of something completely unexpected and from another direction, such as the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, which led to the outbreak of WW I, a month later when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Other countries such as England, France, German and Russia were eventually drawn in on one side of the conflict or another. England was one of the “winners” of that conflict, but it was a Pyrrhic victory that led to the beginning of the end of their colonial empire as it was. And, after World War II began, a period of eight months of quiet, followed because countries like England needed time to prepare and countries like France had to decide whether Poland was really worth fighting over. For a while, Germany described the lull as a “Sitzkrieg” as opposed to a “Blitzkrieg.” In that sense, historians twenty years from now (if there are any who survive) may conclude that World War III actually began when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, or even in February of 2014 when Russian soldiers seized the strategic Crimea from Ukraine. So far, both World Wars have started in Europe.

UKRAINE

To Vladimir Putin, the war in Ukraine is a Holy War. True, he seeks his place in history. He dreams of a Russian Empire again. Russian policy specialist Dr. Fiona Hill said Putin probably spent too much time in the basement of the Kremlin during the pandemic pouring over old maps of the region, drawn during Russia’s glory days. Putin professes to be a Russian Orthodox Christian or at least takes communion, and, as such, the leader (Metropolitan) of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill has his ear. Kirill has his own agenda which may include returning the breakaway Ukrainian Orthodox Church to his fold. Kirill believes that Western Christianity (Catholicism and Protestantism) have fallen into apostacy and decadence. Of particular loathing to both men is the acceptance, even promotion, of homosexuality in the West. It may have been the Gay Pride Parade in Kyiv in the fall of 2021 that convinced Putin to ultimately invade, lest Moscow be next to experience that which Putin and Kirill view as immoral. Thus, Putin and Kirill see themselves as doing God’s work in Ukraine. Both Putin and Kirill have websites which can be translated into English. You don’t have to read too many speeches to understand this point.

It is easier for Russia to draft almost a million Russians to fight in Ukraine than it is for Ukraine to find one hundred thousand new recruits to resist. Russia is getting thousands upon thousands of artillery shells from North Korea as well as swarms of drones from Iran to protect Russian soldiers while Ukraine is carefully rationing their dwindling supplies to protect their soldiers. So, I expect this year that Ukraine will have one or two noteworthy victories, but that there will be a justified sense of despair in Kjiv by autumn. Once Ukraine gets their promised F-16’s, however, they may in desperation strike a major Russian city, port or military installation and then all bets would be off. Russia could claim there is an existential threat to their country which would open the door to yhe use of nuclear weapons, against Ukraine or the NATO countries supplying the F-16’s. Russia has been warning NATO of the risk of nuclear war during the last two years.

News item (UK): “This is our 1937 moment. . .”

1/24/2024: General Sir Patrick Sanders, the Chief of the General Staff of the United Kingdom Army:

” . . . will stress the need for the Government to ‘mobilise the nation’”’ in the event of war with Russia in a speech on Wednesday. ‘This is our 1937 moment, We are not at war, but must act rapidly so that we aren’t drawn into one through a failure to contain territorial expansion.’

Admiral Rob Bauer of The Netherlands who is the current Chair of NATO’s Military Committee:

“. . .warned that private citizens should prepare for an all-out war with Russia in the next 20 years, which would require wholesale change in their lives.

Adml Rob Bauer said that nations needed to be prepared to ‘find more people if it comes to war’, and to consider ‘mobilisation, reservists or conscription'”

These and remarks from other NATO countries when added to the threats of Russia are the drums of war. If history indeed repeats itself, these drums will sound increasingly thunderous over the coming months and years until the cries for peace are reduced to mere whispers.

The Middle East

Another possible causus belliis the Middle East. Here, you have one democracy (Israel) among a tempestuous sea of terrorism and autocratic regimes. Israel had no reason or intention to go into Gaza in the months before October 7, 2023. That was the date of the third deadliest terrorist attack in world history (at least since records began.) It was Israel’s 9/11. And, just as the U.S. believed America had a right to punish the perpetrators of the attack on 9/11 and the country that gave them sanctuary, Israel claimed that same right. Hamas, like most terrorist groups has no problem using men, women and children as human shields. But Hamas has expanded this notion of using human shields to include the whole Gaza Strip. When they hid among civilians, in schools, mosques and hospitals, and Israel destroyed these hiding places trying to flush the terrorists out, Hamas then looked for more schools, mosques and hospitals in which to hide. And now that the Gaza strip is one smoking ruin with few schools, mosques and hospitals remaining, Hamas is covertly relocating to the West Bank to allow those civilians there an opportunity to die for their god. Barely anyone talks anymore about the one hundred or more hostages held by Hamas. Even the UN and the WHO has not published concerns on the brutal sexual violence perpetrated against women, or closeting new born babies in tunnels for months. Very few countries, organizations, or demonstrations (if any) condemn the terrorists for putting innocent people in harm’s way. Hamas is part of the global jihad being waged. Right now, dead jews are what the terrorist want most which is why synagogues and Chabads in the West are on lockdown. After that, they will come after polytheists (i.e., Christians) and atheists. Ultimately, the Sunni Muslims will try to exterminate the Shia and the Shia will try to do the same to the Sunnis. We see this intra-Islamic battle happening at this very moment between Iran and Pakistan.

And as mentioned above, we are also fighting a conventional war in the area of the Bab el Mandeb, a 20-mile-wide, 70-mile long strait between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf Strait of Hormuz, which is 30 miles wide at its narrowest point and 90 miles long. Thirty miles seems fairly wide, but then there are channels that oil tankers and cargo ships are restricted to. Iran might not launch a missile to sink an oil tanker laden with crude. That would be too difficult for them to feign innocence. But they might toss some mines into the channel when they think they are not being observed. If one or two Arab or American oil tankers suffered mysterious explosions and sank within a month’s time, blocking the channel no less, perhaps cause an ecological emergency, that could mean war.

Iran is getting more and more brazen. Perhaps it is because they understand that Russia will let no harm come to Iran because Moscow needs Iran’s drones and other military-related goods and services in order to conquer Ukraine. Typically, there have been hundreds of Russian advisors hanging around Iran’s nuclear plants and elsewhere. These Russian citizens might be killed in a retaliatory, conventional. attack. Yesterday, Iran directly attacked Iraq, sending missiles crashing into Erbil in northern Iraq to attack what Iran claimed was an Israel spy base. Iraq protested this unprovoked attack to the U.N. Security Council which, preoccupied with Gaza, predictably did nothing. It was the first such attack since the Iraq/Iran war of 1980 and this recent attack left numerous dead. Within twenty-four hours of attacking Erbil, Iran targeted Pakistan with missiles striking what it said was a Jaish al-Adl militant training camp. Pakistan, a nuclear power, said two children died in that attack. According to Iran,

The missile strikes were part of Iran’s sweeping reprisals across Syria, Iraqi Kurdistan and Pakistan, designed to exact revenge for a suicide bombing mounted by Isis-K, the Afghan branch of Islamic State, that killed 85 Iranians in the south-eastern city of Kerman on 3 January.”

As usual, Iran initially suspected Israel as being behind the violence, but ultimately the facts suggested a subgroup of the Islamic State (Islamic State – Khorasan Province.) Pakistan warned of “serious reprisals” but parts of Pakistan–especially along its frontier with Afghanistan–are lawless and terrorists (including the late Osama bin Laden) often hide out in Pakistan despite Pakistan’s repeated denials.

In the 105 days since Hamas struck Israel, Iran-sponsored groups have attacked U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq more than 130 times. The attack yesterday alone left numerous American servicemembers being evaluated and treated for traumatic brain injuries. How long can American let this tit-for-tat go on?

News item (Sweden): “There could be war . . .”

“Carl-Oskar Bohlin, the civil defence minister, told the Folk och Försvars conference on Saturday that ‘there could be war in Sweden.’

‘For a nation for whom peace has been a pleasant companion for almost 210 years, the idea that it is an immovable constant is conveniently close at hand,’ he said.

‘But taking comfort in this conclusion has become more dangerous than it has been for a very long time.’

He added: ‘Are you a private individual? Have you considered whether you have time to join a voluntary defence organisation? If not: get moving.’

These remarks were more than some deputy minister or undersecretary speaking off the cuff. Sweden hopes to join NATO be early summer.

China vs. Taiwan

Recently, in different posts, here, here and here, I wrote to the notion of the People’s Republic of China adopting a bellicose attitude over the recent years, whether in staging war games off the coast of Taiwan or coming just barely three meters away from an American B-52 flying in international waters. Recall another occasion where China forced an American AWACs plane to make an emergency landing. Then, there are the incidents described below with the Philippino Coast Guard. Are we approaching a point when worlds collide?

There is really no reason for the U.S. and China to flirt with war. True, a major reason for friction between our two countries is Taiwan, and the schizo-policy the U.S. has in admitting that Taiwan belongs to Beijing on the one hand, but demanding that the PRC not exercise sovereignty over Taiwan on the other (hand.) And, we have many tourists from China who visit the U.S. (850,000 this year so far, but that is less than pre-pandemic times.) We also had more than 260,000 Chinese students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities earlier this year. More importantly, China and the U.S. were brothers-in-arms during the last World War as we confronted a common foe. But the country once described as a “sleeping giant’ has awakened and there are necessarily some ruffled feathers.

The U.S. cannot just abandon the South China Sea. There is a great deal of commerce that passes through the South China Sea from the Koala Lumpur straits to Taiwan, Japan and Korea (and back.) The U.S. shows very little interest in simply ceding this territory to China, especially since international law does not recognize Chinese sovereignty here. Regional neighbors to China such as Vietnam, the Philippines or China, itself, may at some point some point provoke an incident or they may accidentally slide into an unintended conflict. India also views Chinese expansion with a jaundiced eye. A particular concern is that a conflict might erupt when we can least afford one to happen, such as when there are other regional wars like the one in Ukraine and in Gaza or when the U.S. has a president affected by creeping senescence or one who suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder (two scenarios which have occurred back-to-back in the U.S. in the past decade.)

The territorial ambition of the People’s Republic of China became clear in 2009 when China submitted a memo with a map as an addendum referring to a “Nine-Dash-Line as a reference to China’s claims in the South China Sea (included below.) These ocean expanses, the islands, the atolls, and the coral reefs within this perimeter were claimed by the People’s Republic. However, it is not widely known among Americans (at least, to this American) that the imperialist notion of grabbing the vast expanse of the South China Sea actually came from the Republic of China before it fled to Taiwan in 1949. What the current regime in Beijing is doing is simply following through with an earlier initiative that they had no part in.

I use the term “imperialist” because it describes the ability of a country to project its power. And this applies to the People’s Republic today. A recent column in the British Telegraph noted that China currently has more warships in the Persian Gulf than the U.S. has. China’s interest in the South China Sea has to do with mineral wealth (including oil) that may be found there. But also, however, they are creating military bases with airstrips and naval ports in some cases from coral reefs that barely emerge from the surface of the ocean.  Building such a facility ex nihilo (to misappropriate a term) off the northern coast of Malaysia places them almost half as much closer to Australia as they are now. Of course, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and several other sovereign countries (including the U.S.) contest these claims. China has been warning these countries to evacuate the islands within the Nine-Dash-Line perimeter (when applicable) and demanding that American warships stay away, but now the Chinese are getting a bit more assertive. There have been recent clashes with Philippines.

Nations in the past have used the pretense that their citizens in other countries are being mistreated as justification for invading those countries, most notably Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. in March 1939. If and when conventional war breaks out in Eastern Europe, Russia will likely attack Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia first, perhaps on this pretense, perhaps to secure the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

The costs of War

Wars are very, very expensive, especially in terms on manpower. The U.S. Marine Corp (the smallest of the four branches) has 180,958 members as of 2020. Contrast this to the total British armed forces which was 142,560 as of last year. That includes sailors, marines, Air Force and army. The birthrate in South Korea continues to decline, with less than one child replacing both parents. This means conventional trench warfare like we saw in France during the first World War will not be repeated. Nor will wars with large continental armies.

Meanwhile, Russia is on a “war footing” which means they have increased their funding to their military machine to four percent of their gross domestic product. That’s higher than that of the U.S. and twice that of England or any other NATO member. True, they are losing a good deal of tanks, ships and aircraft in their war against Ukraine, but the U.S. and NATO are rapidly depleting their own stocks of munitions, tanks and other instruments of war such as the Patriot system. Putting the U.S. on a war footing to “catch up” would mean higher taxes, something that is anathema at least to the Republicans, a number of whom question Ukraine’s right to self-defense and/or Russia’s intentions.

And actually, the continued downsizing of Western armies and other forces since the fall of Communism has made nuclear war more feasible, since nuclear weapons are much cheaper to produce and maintain then battleships and advanced tactical fighters. For example, at this very moment, Britain has an aircraft carrier (the HMS Queen Elizabeth) that they wish they could deploy off the coast of Yemen to help protect international shipping. However, while England can crew the carrier, they do not have enough sailors to form a crew for the carrier’s necessary support ship. Both remain in port in England at the moment. The question heard in defense circles in the UK today is “Why build an aircraft carrier if it is destined not to sail?” The answer from other perhaps well-meaning but nevertheless defeatist circles is “Why build an aircraft carrier at all?”

In the West Bank, where there have not been elections since 2005, the Palestinian Authority is controled by al-Fatah, another terrorist group. Hezbollah, the terrorist group that has been strangling Lebanon for more than forty years is, I believe, waiting for the West Bank to explode before they launch their tens of thousands of missiles at Israel. Without the help of the U.S., perhaps Israeli’s only faithful ally, it would be difficult for Israel to survive. The October 1974 war between ten Arab countries and Israel brought Israel close to defeat (See the movie Golda.) Israel, like any country, would likely use nuclear weapons if faced with the imminent destruction of their people. It would likely not be a wanton attack, but Iran would certainly be ground zero.

Asymmetrical Warfare

On October 12, 2000 the USS Cole was docked in Yemen. The USS Cole was an American guided missile destroyer. Around 11:18 a.m. that morning, a small fiberglass boat packed with C-4 explosives and piloted by two terrorists pulled up alongside the Cole and detonated the explosives, killing seventeen American servicemembers. The cost of repairs to the 505 foot-long ship once it was ferried back to the U.S. was more than a quarter of a billion dollars. The cost of the dinghy was likely less than a thousand dollars. Two Muslim terrorists killed seventeen American men and women.

I’m sure there is a textbook definition of asymmetrical warfare. But it’s easy based on the USS Cole to see how it works. In Vietnam, the Viet Cong were wounding Americans by throwing glass into ice machines and making bombs out of empty Coke cans. The U.S. spend considerably more money in running up casualties among the insurgents, and ultimately America lost the war.

Today, we have Arabs peasants launching ultra advanced drones and ballistic missiles that may be moved into place using camels and donkeys. Any one of these sophisticated weapons has the potential of sinking a modern Navy ship, regardless of what Admirals may say in testimony to congressional committees. Even if it’s nothing than a lucky shot. This means that war will always be more expensive to the side with the most modern weapons, but that defensive systems can be breached or overwhelmed nonetheless.

War in Space

Satellites are an important component in warfare. They are the “eyes in the sky” that warn of incoming attack, whether that attack be conventional or nuclear. They also provide for vital communications. One of the first indications that war is imminent is when a country’s satellites mysteriously and unexpectedly go offline. Modern countries have anti-satellite weapons launched by missiles from ships, high flying aircraft, or caused by their own satellites, themselves that are programmed to collide with enemy satellites. According to Space:

ASATs can be broadly divided into two types, those that use brute force and those that don’t. Kinetic energy ASATs physically crash into satellites and can be virtually anything that can reach altitude, from ballistic missiles to drones and other satellites.

A different type of ASAT is the non-kinetic type. They use non-physical attacks such as cyber-attacks, jamming and even blind satellites with lasers. These attacks can all be carried out from the air, low orbit, or even ground installations. 

And speaking of communications, there are numerous cables (see below) on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean and also the Pacific Ocean. These cables carry traffic such as banking routines, news and so on. You can often get an idea where they are by looking for Russian surface ships, which tend to congregate or exercise near critical subsea junctions. These can be disabled in numerous ways.

Qinetiq, the UK defence contractor recently tested an advanced laser system known as Dragon Fire to “paint” an incoming missile with energy, in theory enough for a kill. When I read the story, I wonder how it would survive the opening minutes of a war. Some strategists who “game” war would say that the first explosions would occur 20-39 miles above the surface of a targeted country. This would create an effect called an electromagnetic pulse. This effect would destroy electrical components and systems. Cars and trucks wouldn’t start. HVAC and home appliances would be rendered useless. Computers would be forever fried. Hospital equipment such as MRI’s and CT scans depending on semiconductors and related components would be rendered of no further value and so on, unless they were “EMP hardened,” something typically reserved for top secret facilities. But again, with orbital bombardment by bombs dropped by different countries and ballistic missiles with multiple warheads flying overhead, some “leakage” is bound to occur which means that some U.S. cities may be more or less destroyed.

Arctic Warfare

Russia claims a disproportionate amount of the arctic. True, Russia has a 15,000 mile border with the arctic shelf. The U.S. border with the same expanse is confined to Alaska. When you want an icebreaker or soldiers suited for cold warfare, Russia is second to none. Russia is in the process of expanding their Arctic presence, a process that has slowed down because of the demands of their war with Ukraine. According to Iris A. Ferguson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and global resilience, the Russians “. . .have been refurbishing a lot of their airfields and renewing much of their defense architecture across the Arctic region.”  The entry of Finland into NATO and the anticipated entry of Sweden into NATO as angered Russia. Currently, Russia is attempting to flood FInland with undocumented migrants from the Middle East (including Iran.) Finland will have none of it. Russia seems to have stepped up their efforts to spy on these two countries, especially when they join NATO in military exercises. In addition and according to Jim Garamone writing for the U.S. Department of Defense:

Russia has recently embarked on a robust Arctic militarization plan. Russian forces have reoccupied seven former Soviet bases in the Arctic Circle and have also built new bases, to include the Trefoil base in Franz Josef Land and the Northern Clover base on Kotelny Island.”

Russia has also been following the topic of global warming, looking for a “Northeast Passage” that would allow them to move submarines under the ice from their sub pens at Olenya Guba in the Kola penninsula to Vladivostok (now renamed as Fokino) north of the Japanese Islands. In 2022, two Russian nuclear-powered submarines completed a 5,500 nautical mile voyage under the Arctic ice cap from the Barent Sea to the Pacific. According to the Barent Observer:

The inter-fleet transit from the Northern Fleet to the Pacific Fleet contributes to a substantial strength of the submarine forces in the Russian Far East. “Knyaz Oleg” of the Borey-class carries 16 ballistic nuclear missiles, while the “Novosibirsk” is armed with some of the navy’s most modern long-range cruise missiles, torpedoes and mines.”

The U.S. has also had considerable experience in the Arctic. According to a DoD news release:

Navy Rear Adm. Robert Peary led the first expedition to reach the North Pole in 1909. Navy Rear Adm. Richard E. Byrd led aerial expeditions over the Arctic in the 1920s.

In 1958, the USS Nautilus — the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine — sailed under the ice to the North Pole. The next year, the USS Skate surfaced at the pole.

European explorers such as John Cabot and Jacques Cartier came to American several centuries ago in search of a Northwest Passage between North American and the Arctic. Thanks to global warming, now one is starting to form there as well.

Yet, the fact that the earth is slowly starting to warm over decades means very little to soldiers who are camped out on the ice. They are cold, and their equipment does not always function as it should. But this theater of operations will almost certainly play a role in the coming World War, at least as far as the Chinese military is concerned, who write:

. . .the U.S. and its NATO allies will rely on exercises such as Cold Response, Arctic Edge, Polar Bear and Arctic Challenge to continuously improve Arctic combat and integrated deterrence capabilities. Russia will also rely on the construction of the Arctic Strategic Command to strengthen its standing military forces in the Arctic. The game between the two sides in the Arctic region will further intensify.”

Cyber Warefare

According to the Rand Corporation, a government thinktank among other functions:

Cyber warfare involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nation’s computers or information networks through, for example, computer viruses or denial-of-service attacks.”

Denial of service attacks can cripple economic powerhouses such as Amazon by flooding the sites with fake logons or calls as the case may be. It could also shut down the 911 system, or kill patients but changing the prescriptions of hospitalized diabetic or cardiac patients. It was already used to flood the water system in a Florida town with potentially deadly lye.

Thanks to U.S. and Israeli computer experts, cyber warfare can also destroy enemy equipment. For example, the Stuxnet worm, developed in the years after 2005 and designed to slow down or halt Iran’s nuclear program. It was designed to destroy the centrifuges that an aspiring nuclear power needs to spin Uranium 235 in ordder to produce weapons grade uranium.

The Stuxnet worm succeeded in its goal of disrupting the Iranian nuclear program; one analyst estimated that it set the program back by at least two years. The first outsiders to notice the effects of the worm were inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who were permitted access to the Natanz facility. Part of the IAEA’s job was to inspect damaged centrifuges that were being removed from the facility to make sure they weren’t being used to smuggle uranium out to some other plant that wasn’t on the international community’s radar. As noted above, it’s typical for centrifuges to be damaged as part of the uranium enrichment process; at a facility on the scale of Natanz, you could expect about 800 centrifuges a year to be taken out of commission. But in 2010, the IAEA started noticing an unusually high number of damaged centrifuges, with one inspector estimating that almost 2,000 were rendered inoperable. At the time, of course, nobody had any idea that computer malware was causing this.

Role of Robots

There was a time between the World Wars when Flash Gordon and Tobor (robot spelled backwards) dominated the cartoons and movies. People envisioned future warfare being waged sans humans. What we’ve found in the last quarter century is both encouraging and disappointing. For example, drone aircraft or UAV’s (unmanned aerial vehicles) are very commonplace today. Even relatively primitive countries like Yemen understand and appreciate the potential. Terrorists generally do not have an air force, but they can strike targets hundreds of miles away using drones. For the West, it gives us the same ability as well, but spares us the loss of the plane and the capture or death of the pilot. South Korea also has robotic guns along their demilitarized zone (DMZ) with North Korea. The guns are linked to motion sensors and fire in a (hopefully) northern direction anytime motion is detected, whether it is a soldier or a squirrel that trips the sensor. The military (and civilian sector in the U.S.) uses robots to defuse or detonate explosive devices, and so on. In the war against Iraq:

… the original invasion had no robotic systems on the ground. By the end of 2004, there were 150 robots on the ground in Iraq; a year later there were 2,400; by the end of 2008, there were about 12,000 robots of nearly two dozen varieties operating on the ground in Iraq.”

The deadly October attack on Israel by Hamas and the consequential Israeli response has forced the U.S. to withhold missiles and artillery shells in our reserves earmarked for Ukraine in order to provide logistical support for Israel. Something else working in Russia’s favor is the reluctance of influential republicans in Congress to continue support for Ukraine as it seeks to push the invader from its homeland. Moscow has repeatedly threatened nuclear war if they feel threatened (Ukraine has no nuclear weapons) and Russia has depended on the “long game” to win. Russia expects that the West will tire of sending military aid to Ukraine (true) and that more and more NATO statesmen will tell Ukraine to just let Russia take whatever parts of Ukraine Russia wants (also true.)

In spite of the assistance of 12,000 robots, the U.S. was not able to accomplish all of its goals in Iraq. Not did the robots used in Afghanistan spare America from defeat. It’s true that Osama bin Laden was captured, but he was not even in Afghanistan when he was. Once again, the Taliban is in control, drugs grown in Afghanistan are pouring into the West, and women are suffering more than ever. And, 2.402 U.S. soldiers died there and almost ten times that wounded. Still, robots have their uses:

They can operate in dirty environments, such as battle zones filled with biological or chemical weapons, or under other dangerous conditions, such as in space, in rough seas, or in flights with very high gravitational pressures.”

The Israeli Defense Force has been using robots with great success clearing out booby traps in Hamas tunnels. Platoons of American infantry often carry drones with them that they can launch by just tossing it in the air. The drone has a camera that allows the platoon to observe hidden enemy positions. Doubtlessly, the Ukrainian military forces are using robots as well, and new ideas will emerge from that conflict as well.

Role of Nationalism in World Wars

President Ronald Reagan (1980-1988) was credited with saying that “Democracies don’t go to war against each other.” That statement seems to be true, but of course, it was not Reagan’s original idea. You can find it as early as Alexis de Tocqueville’s book “Democracy in America” which was published in the early part of the nineteenth century. The statement tends to be true because the assumption is that democracies usually have divided government, which provides for a system of checks and balances. Therefore, an authoritarian leader has unlimited war-making power, though our Constitution limits our own president’s powers.

Hopefully there will not be a war soon. However, there is anxiety at the highest levels of the leading governments of the western world. Defense spending is starting to climb. Civil defense videos like this one are either being dusted off or reshot. Let’s all hope–and pray–for world peace.