Alt3: Insight through understanding. Advice you can trust. Leading edge development.
Creating the future. Creating advantage.
minimising future risk
creating sustainable advantage
creating opportunity
DISCUSSION: FUTURE WARFARE
Does war have a future?
Most right minded people want peace and stability. Alt3 is dedicated to the
stability and growth of the future. Thankfully – if this term can be used in
such a situation – widespread war isn’t as widespread as it once was. Most
conflicts are localised. Most people are spared the direct and inhuman
horrors of war as they view the daily television news broadcasts of despair
and destruction.
Does war have a future?
Let’s be realistic. Human nature being the way it is, it is an invitation to
controversy to state that future war in some form is inevitable.
The barbarism of some political leaders who expound old fears and hatreds
and suspicions in order to political grip on a people, or even distract from
their own failed domestic economic policies, is shameful – yes. And it is
likely to rear its ugly head again and again and again. This will
undoubtedly be compounded by those commercial organisations who have a
profit margin reliant on open conflict.
In this sense war with bullets and bombs and blood and tears and dead
children and political excuses is inevitable. It isn’t right – but it will
happen. You would think the human race with all its ingenuity and energy
would know better by this stage. Yet the sad fact is, in spite of much
wishful thinking … we don’t.
Increasingly, as conflict becomes more internalised, ironically there will
be wider global conflict in terms of pin point events and underlying
destructive philosophy – that is, terrorism. This will increasingly become
an international issue. It will become an issue no one single country,
regardless of who they are, will be able to combat on their own. And make no
mistake, if it isn’t combated, then it is likely all future growth and
stability will be completely undermined with the consequences of greater
hardship, misery and conflict.
The new world developing will require a new way of thinking, a new
understanding, a new vision with which to share knowledge and information,
and to some extent resources and skills, in order to achieve the potentials
available as well as to avoid the pitfalls. This will require a new
internationalism.
Does war have a future. Whether we like it or not, there will probably be a
widespread war – and we will be the ones who are initially carried along on
a tsunami of emotional decisions and political sound bites. Poor political
leaders will always be tempted to fall back into the age old barbarism. Poor
political leaders have the terrible habit of appearing now and again and use
warfare as an excuse for their being, even although they are invariably
proven wrong.
But … yes, there is a “but” … the widespread wars of the future will fall
into a number of distinct types.
1. Open, widespread regional conflict.
2. Localised civil conflict and upheaval.
3. International anti-terrorist operations.
4. Financial.
Most of these categories have been widely written about and discussed, along
with the numerous conspiracy theories and accusations of information
manipulation.
Only the last category is generally unrecognised.
As the global economy increases, but with specific fragilities making
themselves known, major global players will always distinguish themselves by
their financial might – and the all important sustainability of this
financial might. Where as other more fragile economies will suffer from
rapid short term decline, the sustainable economies will also suffer – but
recover more quickly and be able to retain their scope and depth.
Importantly, due to the risk of backlash against open conflict operations,
due to the costs involved in terms of resources spent and antagonism
generated, economic might will become more a weapon of war than it has been
in the past.
True, this route has always been available to politicians in the past –
although difficult to police. Although sanctions have been imposed as a
common measure to isolate and reduce the effectiveness of the target
country, these are usually long running – and can cause as much harm to the
population of the country as they can to the political leadership, therefore
as much bad PR and domestic political fallout.
And still, the favoured route of the political barbarian is the bullet and
the bomb and creating a frenzy of emotion through the manipulation of
information and media that their domestic populations would agree to almost
anything … and regret it afterwards.
Increasingly, because of the obvious political fallout and the monetary cost
of conflict, the stealth conflict route will be through economic might. A
country with a powerful economy can easily force change in a country with a
fragile economy without the political fall out and cost of conflict.
Unbeknown to much of the world, this is already common practice in one way
or another. Yet the future will extend this stealth role for state economies
to new levels. This will take on the mantle of financial warfare where the
combatants never see the whites of each others eyes, but rather sit in
comfortable offices in different parts of the world, safe in the knowledge
that the only physical harm to befall them will be from stress and perhaps
repetitive strain injury.
This financial warfare will be more than mere trade sanctions that are, at
best a long, slow blunt instrument regardless of how they are presented.
This financial warfare will take the form of precise restrictions on – or a
complete close down of - banking activity, not only at a national level but
importantly on an individual company or an individual level. How long can
any organisation or country survive with their monetary supply crippled?
This will have the result of the powerful bringing the less powerful to
their knees far more swiftly and at far less human or resource cost than
outright warfare – and importantly it causes less dramatic and emotive front
page pictures.
This mechanism has been used cautiously in the past yet with a growing
confidence due to the increasing sophistication of financial tracking and
freezing. This growing confidence has reached such a level that it is
effectively being used in the present day to ensure some situations that
have the capacity to spark into conflict are settled without the traditional
bloodshed. The confidence in this financial ability is definitely
increasing.
True, completely apart from the human and material costs, this mechanism
does not give as much political capital as outright warfare – but also, it
can cause much less damage to political careers. Political leaders who are
increasingly sensitive to public opinion are now more ready to engage in
financial warfare than ever before.
Of course, there will always be those conflicts that will be unable to be
halted by financial restrictions. In our world today there are a number of
them. Increasingly these “offset conflicts” will be promoted and supplied by
one or several states to be fought out in another region of the world so
direct blame or consequence can be landed at their own doorstep. This in
itself is not new. Large parts of the thankfully long past Cold War were
fought this way. Yet this new type of offset conflict is now being run not
by a political ideology, but by religious extremist views that are far more
willing to destroy indiscriminately.
Where as state 2 state conflicts can be settled on the financial
battlefield, international extremism causing severe damage to countless
lives and robbing countless fragile economies of opportunity can never be
fully settled through financial means.
One reason for this is that the sources of funding for extremist groups can
be diverse and very well hidden. If a specific route of funding can be
categorically traced back to any specific country, that country should be
publicly named as sponsoring global terrorism, the proof dealt out, and that
country severely financially constrained by the international community.
And yet the international community does not have an illustrious history of
working cohesively together – hence the ability of some states to continue
to fund global terrorism and the irony of this global terrorism adversely
affecting the international community.
Therefore the future of warfare will be increasingly run on a financial
battlefield … unless there is no other option but to resort to physical
force. This is neither right nor wrong. It simply is. If the international
community wants to “put their money where their mouth is”, so to speak, and
truly provide a framework for sustainable peace, growth and development …
then they have to do something about it.
Actions speak louder than words.
Written by: JAMES STUART http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesstuart - new direction and development through innovation
Insight through understanding. Advice you can trust.
If you don't understand the risks, how can you prepare? Can you afford to let the issues be blurred?
The turbulent 21st century
life isn't black and white