{"id":80681,"date":"2016-10-03T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2016-10-03T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=80681"},"modified":"2016-10-03T10:39:58","modified_gmt":"2016-10-03T09:39:58","slug":"the-major-and-deadly-wars-to-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/10\/the-major-and-deadly-wars-to-come\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cMajor and Deadly\u201d Wars to Come"},"content":{"rendered":"

3 Oct 2016 – <\/em>The Atlantic Council, a leading US geopolitical strategy think tank, published a report on September 20 entitled The Future of the Army<\/em>. The document outlines the far-reaching preparations that are underway for the United States, in the report\u2019s own words, to fight \u201cmajor and deadly\u201d wars between \u201cgreat powers,\u201d which will entail \u201cheavy casualties\u201d and \u201chigh levels of death and destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report confirms the warnings made by the World Socialist Web Site<\/em> and the candidates of the Socialist Equality Party in the 2016 US elections that the world stands closer to war than at any time since 1939.<\/p>\n

The document was co-authored by Lt. General David Barno, who commanded the US-led force in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, having previously taken part in the US invasions of Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1988. It was published by the Atlantic Council\u2019s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, named after the leading military adviser to the Ford, Nixon, George H. W. Bush and Obama administrations.<\/p>\n

It presents a picture of the near future (2020-2025) as a horrifying dystopia, characterized by spiraling inequality, economic insecurity and perpetual war. \u201cToday\u2019s world of haves and have-nots will be greatly magnified,\u201d it states, \u201cwith those fortunate enough to have employment and access to stunning technology living in stark contrast to the hundreds of millions struggling to survive in disrupted environments.\u201d<\/p>\n

This world \u201cwill be marked by the breakdown of order, widespread violent extremism and aggressive large states.\u201d The world situation will be driven by \u201cunpredicted and unpredictable events,\u201d including the possibility of \u201ca nuclear exchange.\u201d Noting that \u201curban operations will increasingly dominate land warfare,\u201d the Atlantic Council predicts that armies will operate \u201cin densely packed metropolitan areas where civilian populations are a part of the battlefield.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking of the present situation, the report declares that \u201cthe United States has entered an era of perpetual war.\u201d It notes, \u201cAfter fifteen years, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are still continuing.\u201d There is, additionally, \u201can increasing number of conflicts in the gray zone, whose primary characteristic is ambiguity\u2014about their objectives, participants, and even outcomes, since they clearly lack defined end points.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, as the document cautions, \u201cThe Army cannot focus solely on these types of conflicts.\u201d It must prepare for what \u201cwe\u2019ve called \u2018the next big war\u2019\u2014involving very capable adversaries, high levels of death and destruction, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of US troops.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Atlantic Council roots the likelihood of such a war in what it calls \u201cRussia\u2019s resurgence,\u201d which requires NATO to \u201cseriously prepare for the possibility of a Russian attack on one or more of its members for the first time since the end of the Cold War.\u201d China, likewise, has \u201cbecome increasingly aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noting that 5,366 US soldiers died during the Iraq war, the report declares that \u201cthe next big war\u201d will see levels of violence and death far beyond what has been seen in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. It bemoans the fact that Army \u201cpersonnel have not been psychologically hardened by personal experience for the grim task of fighting through heavy losses to battlefield victory.\u201d It warns that \u201ccurrent Army leaders have little if any experience with the extreme battlefield stresses caused by overrun units and heavy casualties,\u201d adding, \u201cThese stresses were common during past US conflicts and could likely be so again during a future big war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA future major war against a great power competitor might,\u201d according to the report, \u201crequire the Army to grow by several orders of magnitude in order to prevail.\u201d To make this possible, the Army must begin making plans for a \u201cmass mobilization.\u201d As the Atlantic Council explains, \u201cThe growing threats in today\u2019s world\u201d mean that the Army \u201cmust once again build a mobilization plan to rapidly grow the size of the Army to meet a national crisis of existential danger.\u201d In other words, it must prepare to institute a draft.<\/p>\n

Finally, there must be active preparations for an intervention\u2014or even takeover\u2014by the military in the event of what the report calls a \u201cbreakdown of civil order\u201d\u2014a euphemism for the emergence of a political challenge from below to the domination of the ruling class. The Atlantic Council notes that \u201cthe large-scale disruption of civil order\u2026would almost certainly engage much of the Army in providing extensive support to civil authorities throughout the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Totally left out of this analysis, except as the object of military repression, are the American people. It never occurs to those engaged in the preparation of these policies to consult the population. It is taken for granted that it must acquiesce to a course of action that will result in death and destruction on a horrific scale.<\/p>\n

None of this is being discussed or even hinted at in the US elections. The media and the establishment candidates are seeking to bury the real issues at stake. The questions of life and death are deliberated away from the cameras. They are the purview of the \u201cdeep state\u201d\u2014the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies and their associated think tanks.<\/p>\n

One can be certain that in the second mud-slinging match between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, scheduled for October 9, none of the issues raised in the Atlantic Council report will be addressed. Regardless of whether Trump or Clinton wins next month\u2019s election, the war preparations will go ahead. In the United States, dominated by an immensely powerful financial oligarchy and the vast national security apparatus in its employ, elections serve as little more than a fa\u00e7ade for policies determined behind the scenes and kept out of public view.<\/p>\n

There is no way for workers to oppose the drive to war by voting for either Clinton or Trump, or, for that matter, the candidates put forward by the third-rate capitalist parties, the Greens and the Libertarians.<\/p>\n

Nothing can stop the drive to war except the mobilization of the international working class. Workers and young people seeking a genuine alternative to war should support the campaign of Jerry White and Niles Niemuth, the Socialist Equality Party\u2019s candidates for president and vice president in the 2016 elections, and make plans to attend the SEP\u2019s November 5 conference in Detroit, Socialism vs. Capitalism and War<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 wsws.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

3 Oct 2016 – A report by a leading geopolitical strategy think tank makes clear that the US military is engaged in intensive planning for wars involving massive casualties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}