*Numbers in () are background references, they are listed at the bottom.*
It turns out that the idea of doomsday (1) in or around 2012 is not far fetched at all. Although it won't happen quite like the movie, but rather the old fashion way - war.
The movie "2012" is coming out in theaters on November 13, 2009. Based on the movie trailer (2), it looks like the Earth will be destroyed in 2012 by meteorites, earthquakes, giant waves and more. The question is - could it really happen?
There is no particular reason that the Earth should experience a series of supernatural events in 2012. Yes, the Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012, but there is absolutely no evidence that date means anything in real life.
Unfortunately, real life is going to be even scarier than the movie. Imagine going to bed one night and waking up to a destroyed America. That's assuming you even wake up. That's the kind of scenario that is becoming more and more possible, and might really happen around 2012.
The world has not seen a major world war for over 60 years. The idea that this type of war could even occur is beyond the imagination of most people. Yet, a major nuclear war (3) is now more likely than it has ever been.
To understand why a major nuclear war is likely one must look back at how prior wars started (4). For example, what were the conditions (5) that caused World War I to start, and are they present today?
The first condition for World War I is a declining superpower. Britain was already in decline in 1914 and was just not up to the task of confronting Germany.
Today it is the United States that is in decline (6). We have trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. The nation is divided politically. Soon our standard of living must start decreasing.
The impact of this decline should not be underestimated. It is huge.
The idea is that a certain world order that has existed for many years is in the state of change. This period can be very dangerous.
The second condition is powerful rivals. This was Germany in 1914, and today it's Russia (7) and China.
China is busy taking the profits it earned from the United States and building more nuclear-tipped missiles to point at us. Russia is busy upgrading its nuclear missiles and warheads.
Additionally, for some reason both Russia (8) and China (9) are investing a lot of resources building underground nuclear bunkers capable of protecting millions of people.
The third condition is weakened alliances. Currently NATO has no clear purpose. The Europeans are not fond of the United States and most likely would not come to our defense in a nuclear war.
The alliance with South Korea is very weak because the people have become more and more anti-American.
Even the alliance with Japan is set to change with the recent election of a new political party to power.
The fourth condition is the existence of terrorist supporting states. That was Yugoslavia in 1914, and today it's Iran, Syria, Lebanon and other Islamic states.
The fifth condition is the existence of terrorist organizations. They existed in Yugoslavia in 1914, and today there are Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and more.
The first three conditions set the stage for war but might not necessarily start a war. The last two provide the catalyst to actually start the war.
There are other conditions that one could use to determine if war is near. For example, there are the three Es of war (10): Empires in decline, economic volatility and ethnic conflict. These are all present today.
The United States is in decline. Russia and China are experiencing economic volatility due to the global financial crisis. Ethnic conflict is a major source of problems in the Middle East.
Another way to understand war is to look at how major wars tend to follow cycles (the cycles of war) (11) based on the human life span. As a crisis generation gets older and starts to die, the younger generations (12), having not directly experienced a major crisis involving war, start to become susceptible to a major new war.
The cycles of war point to a major crisis occurring between 2005 and 2025.
You can see our susceptibility increasing as Obama is cutting the number of nuclear weapons down to 1,500 and possibly even 1,000. A major attack by both Russia and China means that we can retaliate once then we have nothing left. Meanwhile, millions of Russians and Chinese can wait us out in their nuclear bunkers.
Could they wait us out if they knew we could retaliate four or five times over several years?
How would a nuclear war start (13)?
Recently, we learned that Iran has enough uranium to build one nuclear bomb. It doesn't actually have a bomb, but it could build one if it wanted to. Additionally, it is building enough centrifuges over five years to create about 25 bombs per year.
We have now crossed a threshold where Israel must act. In a couple of years Iran will be in position to have 20 or 30 nuclear bombs. This is intolerable to Israel, and a very real threat to its existence.
In the next year or two Israel must attack Iran and destroy or cripple its ability to create nuclear weapons.
What do you think will happen after Israel attacks Iran?
Iran will launch a coordinated attack against Israel using Syria, Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Hamas. They will seek to destroy Israel once and for all.
Both Syria (14) and Hezbollah (15) have chemical weapons that could be launched on Israeli cities.
What do you think would go through the mind of a Jew when chemical weapons are exploding over Israeli cities?
There can be only one response: nuclear. Whoever would dare to use chemical weapons against Israel will be obliterated with nuclear weapons.
Once Israel starts using nuclear weapons then it must destroy all of its hostile neighbors. That means about 10 to 15 million deaths will occur over a short period of time.
Naturally the rest of the world would be pretty upset at Israel, and America would be blamed too.
Is that a good reason to launch a nuclear war against America? It turns out that the answer is yes, but not right away. It will take a few years to properly prepare for nuclear war against America.
The normal scenario where a small conflict escalates into a major nuclear war will not happen. In this case a small nuclear war will not escalate, but rather it will die out. The escalation will occur a few years later when the entire world is not expecting anything to happen. It will come out of the blue for no apparent reason.
Back in 2008 a Russian general (16) announced that Russia reserved the right to use nuclear weapons preemptively to protect itself and its allies. Okay, but which countries are allies of Russia?
Syria is an ally (17) of Russia.
So Russia is already telling us that if Syria is destroyed by Israel then Russia may launch a nuclear strike over this event.
Doesn't Russia have a lot to lose by going to war with America? The article, Beware Failing Rogues (18), describes how economically distressed states might go to war. The more a state has to lose, the less likely it is to risk losing it. However, Russia is looking more and more like an economically distressed state due to the huge drop in the price of oil.
Russia has another big problem in that its military is declining. It simply cannot upgrade its military equipment faster than it is degrading. So there will be a significant reduction in Russia's nuclear missiles in the next 15 years. Analysts expect Russia's nuclear missiles to eventually stabilize at around 300 in the next 15 years.
By 2030, America will probably have the technology to take out most of the Russian missiles during their boost phase. This will be a disaster for Russia.
So Russia has a window over the next ten years where it can destroy America. After that period Russia may have to start living under the thumb of America for a long time.
What about China?
Already one can read about the thousands of protests each year from unhappy citizens. The environmental pollution is so bad that it is devastating to the people. The country's one-child policy is a demographics disaster. The country's leadership is mostly unresponsive to the complaints of the people. There are significant water problems covering large portions of the country. There's wife kidnapping because men are getting desperate for a wife, and this will get worse. There are abandoned little girls because the parents wanted boys instead.
Even though things don't look too bad in China right now, they can easily change due to the above mentioned internal problems.
If you want to see what nuclear war looks like then check out this YouTube film clip from the movie, "The Day After". (19)
In conclusion, a nuclear war in the Middle East will act as a sign that the United States could be subject to nuclear retaliation from Russia and China. The actual retaliation would probably take two to three years to occur in order to give Russia and Chine time to prepare.
Background References:
(1) The Next War of the World
(2) Institute For Human Continuity: The IHC, Keeping You Safe For '2012?
(3) Chance of nuclear war is greater than you think: Stanford engineer makes risk analysis
(4) The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West
(5) Geopolitics: The Three E's of War
(6) Empire Falls - Why the sun is setting on the west
(7) Look back at Weimar and start to worry about Russia
(8) Russian bunkers against nuclear attack
(9) Shanghai Completes Massive Underground Bunker to Protect Citizens from Disasters
(10) Geopolitics: The Three E's of War
(11) Winter's Coming for the Boomers
(12) The Coming Era of Russia's Dark Rider
(13) The Coming Nuclear War in 2012
(14) Israel is on a collision course with Syria
(15) Agencies Say Iran Has the Nuclear Fuel to Build a Bomb
(16) Russia's Nuclear Threat
(17) Russia to defend its principal Middle East ally: Moscow takes Syria under its protection
(18) BANKRUPT ROGUES: BEWARE FAILING FOES
(19) The Day After (Attack Segment)
