# The Forever War



## George Wallace (9 Aug 2006)

Anyone remember reading this Science Fiction story, "The Forever War"?  Our little topic on "Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land" is a neverending spiral into the depths on the current situation in the Middle East.  Why don't we look down the road, way down the road, to the distant future and to a World that might be.  A World where Radical Islam has been waging war against the Western World for centuries, and has finally won.  Won through the spread of moderates fleeing the Radicals and settling in other lands and 'breeding' like rabbits.  Won by the apathetic attitudes of Western Societies and Religions.  Won through the winning of the Hearts and Minds of Muslims around the world by propaganda in all media and the internet.  Won through Terrorist acts at the hearts of Western Nations.  Won by wearing down the Armies of the West and driving their Military Industrial Complexes into bankruptcy .

Islam has conquered the Western World and driven it back into the Dark Ages, socially, commercially, and Religiously.  Without Jewish and Western Religions to terrorize, the Radicals must fight amongst themselves or find another enemy.  They now turn their attention to the East.  The Sleeping Dragoon.  Unfortunately, the Sleeping Dragoon has not been Sleeping.  China has, since regaining control of Hong Kong, been slowly 'capitalizing' on its potentials.  It has allowed more freedoms in Industry.  It has expanded on its' Oil fields through Western assistance in expertise and technology.  It has turned into a very Capitalistic society, but one that holds far different Religious and Family Beliefs than the Muslim.  

Now we have a whole new conflict.


Of course this is centuries away, but what if?


----------



## Infanteer (10 Aug 2006)

Huh?


----------



## exsemjingo (10 Aug 2006)

That _is_ scary.  Now I won't be able to sleep tonight.


----------



## GAP (10 Aug 2006)

It would only take 1 maybe 2 generations....


----------



## Kalatzi (10 Aug 2006)

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman A Vietnam vet- one of my favourite books
I decided to look for some reviews. My memory isn't what it used to be but I didn't recall either the Muslims or the Chinese being the villains. 

Found one on wickipedia that you may find interesting.  I won't even try to summarize it.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forever_War
 :cheers:


----------



## George Wallace (10 Aug 2006)

This has nothing to do with the book.  It is a what if scenario.  Just a catchy title for a situation that seems to have no end.  The book ended with the Soldiers coming back to Earth and finding out that everyone was "GAY".  We aren't talking about the book, we are talking about the neverending situation in the Middle East that may lead to World Dominance of a Radical Religion, and how it may have to go out and find/create new enemies should it win.  Much like Hitler did with the Jews, then the Gypsies, and the Handicapped, etc.  What will happen if they turned East and faced China head on?


----------



## GrimRX (10 Aug 2006)

George Wallace said:
			
		

> This has nothing to do with the book.  It is a what if scenario.  Just a catchy title for a situation that seems to have no end.  The book ended with the Soldiers coming back to Earth and finding out that everyone was "GAY".  We aren't talking about the book, we are talking about the neverending situation in the Middle East that may lead to World Dominance of a Radical Religion, and how it may have to go out and find/create new enemies should it win.  Much like Hitler did with the Jews, then the Gypsies, and the Handicapped, etc.  What will happen if they turned East and faced China head on?



A lot of death.


----------



## paracowboy (10 Aug 2006)

George Wallace said:
			
		

> What will happen if they turned East and faced China head on?


better question: How do we arrange that right now?


----------



## Shadowolf (10 Aug 2006)

The Chinese government has no love for any religion that messes with politics, but I believe its current ties to Pakistan and Iran make them unwilling to take a stand against radical islam.


----------



## rmacqueen (10 Aug 2006)

Just to put a fly in the ointment, so to speak, if the US is broken economically the Chinese and Indians would both suffer as they are the largest holders of the current US debt.  Another scary scenario is if the Chinese decide to suddenly dump all that US currency, the deflation of the American dollar would destroy the US economy and those that are hooked into it.  With the Chinese attitude of suffering for the common good, it is really not that farfetched a scenario.


----------



## a_majoor (10 Aug 2006)

A rather underreported theater of operations in the current global conflict is India (with a sub sub theater in Siri Lanka), so there is potential for the "third" superpower to get involved in a very big way. Given they have limited force projection capabilities, their contribution will probably be limited to the immediate region at first, but they will soon realize their security zone includes the Indian Ocean, East Africa, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

China is neutral to antagonistic to the West, and greatly needs the oil supplies of the Middle East (yes, it is all about the oil). Their Islamic minorities are concentrated in the west of China, and there is only a tenuous land bridge towards the Islamic heartland. On a strategic level, the Chinese can afford to sit this one out, or even slowly stir the pot to keep the West occupied. India is generally antagonistic towards China, and is also a natural fit to the Anglosphere West, so the Chinese will have all the more reason to keep the situation at a slow simmer to distract their other potential rival.

I am not entirely certain that attempting to take down the world's reserve currency will work to the favor of the Chinese, either in a practical sense (what will replace the US dollar?) or even as a way to cripple the American economy. The flexible social construct of the United States gives it a great deal of resilience, and while the collapse will sweep away much of the socialistic overburden on the US economy, and probably cripple large corporations which depend on government grants, contracts and regulation, there is a vast understructure of small and medium companies which will rush in to fill the gaps. No other economy or society has anything like this, and while the change will be difficult, in a way the experiment will be very exciting as well. (Historical note; deep collapses in the past like the Mycenaean dark age or the Black Death in Europe ushered in profound changes in the follow on societies. Sometimes this is a good thing, like classical Greece or the Renaissance, sometimes it is a bad thing, like the acendency of Socialism in Europe and Russia after World War One).


----------



## paracowboy (10 Aug 2006)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> On a strategic level, the Chinese can afford to sit this one out, or even slowly stir the pot to keep the West occupied.


a policy that the Sovitts employed for decades in their support of every single dictator, theocrat, and terrorist outfit in the Middle East, simultaneously. Even those who were fighting each other. Discord was vital to the success of the "People's Revolution".


----------



## Brad Sallows (10 Aug 2006)

>What will happen if they turned East and faced China head on?

Despite the notional universality of the customary and broadly ratified laws of war, only the "western" nations truly allow themselves to be bound to the limitations therein.  It is entirely possible that a remorseless and dispassionate foe could view another group as being too dangerous to be permitted to continue to exist.


----------



## vigillis (11 Aug 2006)

The Chinese have already "un-pegged" the Yuan from the US dollar, and have switched to a basket of currencies in a managed float.  This re-evaluation allows the Yuan to rise against the dollar.  Given that everybody and their dog has heard about the future Chinese economy with its cheap labour and burgeoning new middle class and its appetite for luxury goods it is not far-fetched to imagine the Yuan as the next currency.  As for the political will of the Middle Kingdom, search the web for the itinerary of the Chinese president over the last couple of years and you will see a diverse mix of nations including Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, Australia, and even Canada.  

What is the common denominator of these countries?  Natural resources, oil being one of them, iron ore, amongst others.  A dispassionate foe, as Mr Sallows brings up, would overlook such things such as human rights abuses before buying oil rights wouldn’t it?  Would not a dispassionate foe also do business with failed states much like Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria, Gabon?  China has done this and many other things in order to secure oil supply and minerals rights in the past couple of years.  

The Chinese are already disrupting the American economy with its purchase of US T-bonds.  Those who can remember, think back to the last times oil prices were so high, what came after the oil crisis… high inflation rates.  This has not occurred yet, why China.  I wish I could explain it without boring the snot out of you, but by having such a large (around 500 billion) amount of US currency in its foreign exchange reserves it has offset the short term interest rates by the Fed, which in turn through other central banks interference or not keeps global inflation low.  Long story short, global monetary policy is being made in Washington and Beijing.

Start learning Mandarin now, gentlemen!


----------



## tomahawk6 (11 Aug 2006)

China has alot of problems and a very precarious economy, meaning it is tied very closely to the US producing consumer products. Second a friend of mine just returned from China and told me that power shortages were common. A couple of factories he was going to visit were shut down due to power outage. He told me it was common. They have massive unemployment of unskilled labor from rural China. By all means learn a few dialects but dont write off the US economy.


----------



## chanman (11 Aug 2006)

I would say the Chinese economy is still fairly closely tied to the US due to the heavy-export orientation of their industry and the status of THE US as still the biggest consumer market out there.

I think it was in _The Economist_, but analysis of post-basket fluctuations of the Yuan would indicate that the USD is still weighted very heavily in the basket.  (The other major currencies would presumably be the Yen and the Euro)

They won't, and probably shouldn't free-float the Yuan for a long time to come - their banking sector isn't mature enough.  Banks suffer from moral hazard by their very nature, and even more so when the industry is lacking effective regulation and experieince.

The purchase of US T-bonds is dictated by the inflexible exchange rate due to the Yuan's peg to the USD, and then the currency basket.  When the US dollar fluctuates, China's central bankers have two options - revalue/devalue the Yuan, or buy/sell US assets to maintain the pegged value.

China is not the only large holder of US bonds, Japan, I think, was the largest, and may still be larger than China.


----------



## Echo9 (11 Aug 2006)

China will get old before it gets rich.  It will also become more aggressive as it becomes more masculine.  The one child policy has resulted in a massive demographic perversion- most people coming of age today will have 4 grandparents to support, and a large number of men have no prospect for marriage.  The only things that are keeping a lid on revolution there are the current growth rate and state repression.  I find it unlikely that both will be able to hold for another 20-30 years.

Islamofascism will be a problem for a while too.  Until the West decides that naked aggression must be met with overwhelming force, things will get worse.  Unfortunately, that decision point is likely not until we lose a city.  The problem is that Muslim moderates have an uphill battle to wage for control of their religion- not only is there the standard problem of dealing with a violent opponent non-violently, there's also an institutional bias within most of the schools of Islamic juridprudence that give preference to the more aggressive Medinan suras rather than the more peaceful Meccan ones. 

India, becomes the key terrain for both of these issues for the West. The relationship with India will become the key strategic alliance for the next 100 years- much moreso that a rapidly declining and islamifying Europe.


The world is certainly becoming a more complex place.  Looking back at the 90s, we can realize just the extent to which the West took a holiday for a decade.


----------



## chanman (11 Aug 2006)

Echo9 said:
			
		

> China will get old before it gets rich.  It will also become more aggressive as it becomes more masculine.  The one child policy has resulted in a massive demographic perversion- most people coming of age today will have 4 grandparents to support, and a large number of men have no prospect for marriage.  The only things that are keeping a lid on revolution there are the current growth rate and state repression.  I find it unlikely that both will be able to hold for another 20-30 years.



Demographics affect that figure though - many of the men unable to find wives will be the poorest of society - especially poor peasant farmers.  China will age mind bogglingly fast because of the age-distribution.

However, on the male-dominated front, it is at 106:100 men to women.  It is a problem, but not anywhere near unique.

From The Economist: Pocket World in Figures


Country                                       men per 100 women
1 UAE                                         214
2 Quatar                                     206
3 Kuwait                                     150
4 Bahrain                                    132
5 Oman                                      128
7 Saudi Arabia                            117
8 Greenland                                113
9 Jordan                                     108
  Afghanistan                               107
  Andorra                                    107
  Brunei                                      107
  Faroe Islands                            107
  Libya                                        107
14 China                                     106
    Pakistan                                  106
    PNA                                        106
17 French Polynesia                     105
    Guinea                                    105
    India                                       105
    New Caledonia                         105
    Niger                                       105
    Taiwan                                    105


----------



## exsemjingo (12 Aug 2006)

Shadowolf said:
			
		

> The Chinese government has no love for any religion that messes with politics, but I believe its current ties to Pakistan and Iran make them unwilling to take a stand against radical Islam.



Wait a minute... I thought the Americans had been working with the Pakistanis against Afghan insurgents.
China deals with Pakistan in against Indian interests, but the relationship of those dealings to Western interests are less clear.  The only sure thing that can be said is that these alliances are not monoliths, neither are ours.


----------



## willy (12 Aug 2006)

chanman said:
			
		

> Country                                       men per 100 women
> 1 UAE                                         214
> 2 Quatar                                     206
> 3 Kuwait                                     150
> ...



These figures are misleading: the overwhelmingly male population of the gulf states is due to their extensive use of migrant workers from South Asia.  The gulf states also employ significant numbers of foreign technical experts-- primarily North Americans and Europeans.  Both groups contain few females and both are transient populations.  Permanent residents make up only a small percentage of the current population of these countries, and I'd guess that the ratio would be much closer to 1:1 if the transients who will eventually return home weren't considered.


----------



## tamouh (12 Aug 2006)

> However, on the male-dominated front, it is at 106:100 men to women.  It is a problem, but not anywhere near unique.



Actually intersted, just recently in Saudi the "Religious advisory council" issued a Fatwa allowing men to marry women and still keep separate places of living and no living expenditure paid. The reason behind it, many Saudi women go unmarried due to the fact alot of Saudi men who want to get married don't have the resources to enter in a marriage. It is a sign of growing number of  young Saudis who are unemployed, and getting close to the poverty line if it wasn't for family support and very basic social assistant from the government.

On the "War Forever" front, in my opinion this is linked to the run out of oil thread. At the end, the survival of whose best prepared to handle the era after oil economy trumbles.


----------



## chanman (12 Aug 2006)

willy said:
			
		

> These figures are misleading: the overwhelmingly male population of the gulf states is due to their extensive use of migrant workers from South Asia.  The gulf states also employ significant numbers of foreign technical experts-- primarily North Americans and Europeans.  Both groups contain few females and both are transient populations.  Permanent residents make up only a small percentage of the current population of these countries, and I'd guess that the ratio would be much closer to 1:1 if the transients who will eventually return home weren't considered.



They do look odd, but the CIA's world factbook sex ratios show similar numbers for 

Saudi Arabia

Sex ratio:
at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.04 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.33 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 1.13 male(s)/female
total population: 1.2 male(s)/female (2006 est.)

UAE

Sex ratio:
at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.04 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.55 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 2.73 male(s)/female
total population: 1.43 male(s)/female (2006 est.)


Kuwait
Sex ratio:
at birth: 1.04 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.04 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.77 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 1.71 male(s)/female
total population: 1.52 male(s)/female (2006 est.)

Now, Foreign workers certainly could account for a lot - but over 65?  I don't *think* it's typical to retire there, but I guess I could be wrong.  Also, there are also female foreign workers - nurses and housekeepers - one of my mother's coworkers has been there on contract, and I can't recall where, but Phillipino domestic workers were apparently fairly common - and the vast majority of those would probably be female as well.

Otherwise... where are they getting this heavily male biased immigration, and where'd all the women go?


----------



## a_majoor (18 Aug 2006)

Long term struggles change societies. I am not totally on board with this analysis (the period 1918-1989 should be the Wars against Socialism, but it is also co mingled with the "fall of the Eagles" [the ending of the great European Empires]).

http://themonarchist.blogspot.com/2006/08/second-hundred-years-war-1914-present_18.html



> *The Second Hundred Years' War (1914-Present)*
> 
> 
> There’s a lot of talk about whether or not we are in the middle of World War III. That’s what Newt Gingrich calls the worldwide “War on Terror”, as do others. Going one step further, Norman Podhoretz mimics James Woolsey's lead by referring to it as World War IV, and agrees with the Project for the New American Century that the Cold War was effectively the real number III. This would be taking a broader view of things alright, but I still think they both come up short on the big picture, and end up stuck in their confined and present day, non-historical perspective.
> ...


----------

