And for the Middle East, if you want to win a war there, you uses one of the tribes against the others. The British did it with the Commonwealth, and again in Afghanistan (The Taliban comes from the Pushtun tribe, the largest in the country, so the coalition have allied themselves with two other big tribes who they use to control the country). The Russians in Afghanistan tried to supress all the tribes, and the Americans in Iraq have to some degree done the same. They have at least not allied themselves with either the Sunnis, the Shias or the Kurds. But after Iraq, I think a foreign power trying to control Arbia would be stupid to repeat the American’s mistake.

And the global economy now isn’t global because of exports or imports, but because of investment. Chinese investors controls 5% of the American economy, I think, and while the Russian economy is mainly ruled by Olligarchs (sp?), and would be even more so in your scenario, the Olligarchs have become rich through investment in the West and vice verca. If all foreign investors leave a country, I’d say that there’s a big chance that the economy goes into a depression worse than the thirties in US.

And if we tried to invade Sweden/pressure them, we would get either NATO or the EU on our ass. The time for expansionism is over until the big Unions dissolve.

*Sigh* This was blocked as spam the last time. If it happens again I will castrate this web-page with a spoon. Consider yourselves warned.

Sorry about that; I’ll run and tell the webmaster right away. And kudos on the reference; it’s an awesome quote.

“Terje, Terje, Terje… I will allow myself to take the position of a hopelessly arrogant mentor, because that is the position I feel I belong most in now.”

Be my guess; I feel like playing the part of the idiot student right now.

“I’m quite sure you’re one of those who thinks the Americans already have gone to war for oil once, and they’ll probably do it again.”

First thing’s first. I only partially agree with this; I also think that there was a sincere wish to establish democracy in the region, and possibly also some issues of American national security that were involved in the decicion to intervene in Iraq. The latter I’m somewhat unsure of, though, seeing as the American administration had to invent proof of Saddam’s ability to threat the US. I’m also open for other explanations, of course. It’s not like I’m an expert or anything.

“First of all: Major political instability in the Middle East, enough so that it becomes openly hostile against the West, and nobody cares about the oil and gas. I’m quite sure you’re one of those who thinks the Americans already have gone to war for oil once, and they’ll probably do it again. However, if it’s NATO, Russia or China who intervenes (it would probably be China, in your worst case scenario, the US simply don’t have enough strength and the EU have too much bureaucracy to get anything done, and Russia wouldn’t risk the relatively stable relationship it’s got to the west) doesn’t matter that much. Somebody would intervene, The Middle East would become a war-zone, yes, but it wouldn’t become a threat to anyone else than itself. Too much ressourses there.”

Well, you quite obviously have a point; any serious Arab/Middle Eastern political opposition to the West would be stamped down immediately. However, I’m not on par with your analysis, either. I agree that the US probably doesn’t have the manpower, at least that’s what the current situation in Iraq indicates. In this semi-liberal day and time, they’d have serious problems with taking the kind if steps that would be necessary to really quell all opposition in Iraq, not to mention the entire Middle East. Because I see this (ie. the occupation of the entire Middel East against the will of the majority of the population) as being a problem solvable only by extreme violence. And if you take into account that the methods of the Americans are being refered to as “brutal” today, one can only imagine what one would call methods were they stop pretending to care about Iraqi (or more generally Middle Eastern) civilians, and just does whatever they think necessary to eliminate the threat. And even this isn’t a guaranteed road to supression of the “insurgents”, seeing as the brutality could backfire something fierce. As for Russia, they’ve also tried to occupy Muslim lands, and they failed, even when they were much more militarily superior than they are today and when they had no real limitations on the measures they could take to stomp out any resistance. And China? Well, they may be well positioned for an attack into the central and west Asian lands, they may have more manpower (and potential manpower) than any other state on Earth, and they may be ruthless, but that’s no guarantee for success, either. Sure, both the Americans, the Russians and the Chinese could utilize Churchill’s old strategic bombings (Churchill was one of the masterminds behind Great Britain’s policy against rebellious indegenous populations in their colonies: Threaten to bomb them to smithereens if they didn’t do as they were told) to get what they wanted from any Middle Eastern governments, but beyond that, I doubt they could do much. Not that it probably wouldn’t be enough, but if the Islamists seized power in Pakistan (not an unlikely scenario) and decided to share their atomic technology with other Islamic states (relatively uncertain; Pakistan in a predominantly Sunni country, meaning that they probably wouldn’t be too eager to share their information with e.g. Iran, and it could be that they would hesitate to share information with fellow Sunnis as well), or if the Iranians developed nuclear capabilities of their own, this whole intervention scenario would be less realistic. Also, I forgot to mention that the Islamists, in this unrealistic scenario of mine, had overrun Israel, and seized the nuclear weapons of the Israelis. But even if I have some objections, I acknowledge the importance of the factors you brought up.

“The same with Russia. Good old Mother Russia have the largest gas-reserves in the world, and it wouldn’t risk it’s economy by estranging it’s customers. It’s the same for all the big powers, really. China trade with the US, the US trades with EU, and EU trades with Russia. The global economy has become just that, global, and it won’t be risked by full scale wars.”

While you undoubtedly have a point, it’s also a fact that the world economy has been global in the past, and that a slide back into protectionism always consitutes a risk for the international economic system. So, Mother Russia would perhaps not want to estrange her customers, but it’s also possible that they decided they wanted their gas for themselves. It’s a question of whether you believe in the Liberal or the Realist schools of international relations theory, really. (Or almost, at least.)

“And “full scale wars” have hopefully stopped to exist. Either you have a nuclear Armageddon, or you have strained relationships for forty years before the wish to have a conflict dissappears. The atomic bomb changed EVERYTHING when it comes to full scale warfare.”

Good point. However, the use of the atomic bomb is still something of an unknown in current international relations, and it is believed that the threshold for their use is rather high, at least in Western countries. However, it is uncertain how much it would take before Pakistan or even India used them, so it is nevertheless a very good point. However, one of the basic assumptions I made above (even though I didn’t mention them; my bad, that) was that all of the “regions” had nuclear weapons, and that they didn’t use them aganist each other because they feared retribution. A classic balance of terror and power, in other words. One funny thing that suddenly struck me, though, is that the regions I’ve sketched here closely resembles Huntington’s famous seven “civilizations”, which is kinda funny, seeing as I dislike Huntington’s clash of civilizations theory intensively. But I guess that’s how things go when I try to think as a Conservative.

“And if your scenario against all odds and logic happens, Norway would either be a puppet for Russia (after a border-conflict in the Barents-region) or for the EU (they would force us to join to maintain their own energy-interests). We wouldn’t had much to say, unfortunately….”

Yeah, but that’s why we’ve gotta start taking measures as fast as possible. We must in the very least begin to prepare our water resources, seeing as global warming will make freshwater even more of a rarity than it is today. But in order to protect these resources, we need manpower, and we need more natural resources, and the only way we can get those are to take them (or by them, or whatever) from Sweden. Not that Sweden couldn’t crush us beneath their thumb in they also armed themselves, but hey. At least we’ve (aka. the Norwegian state) got money.

“No, if you want to be pessimistic, say that a solar flare hits the Earth in fifty or so years, knocks all satelittes out of orbit and destroys the electricity for half the globe. Say that the enviroment will be utterly butfucked.Say that we will run empty of oil without finding any viable alternatives. Say that all three happens in the same decade. Then, my friend, then we will be truly and utterly buttfucked.”

That, we would be.

Awesome, comment, Ole. A splendid read.

Terje, Terje, Terje… I will allow myself to take the position of a hopelessly arrogant mentor, because that is the position I feel I belong most in now. First of all: Major political instability in the Middle East, enough so that it becomes openly hostile against the West, and nobody cares about the oil and gas. I’m quite sure you’re one of those who thinks the Americans already have gone to war for oil once, and they’ll probably do it again. However, if it’s NATO, Russia or China who intervenes (it would probably be China, in your worst case scenario, the US simply don’t have enough strength and the EU have too much bureaucracy to get anything done, and Russia wouldn’t risk the relatively stable relationship it’s got to the west) doesn’t matter that much. Somebody would intervene, The Middle East would become a war-zone, yes, but it wouldn’t become a threat to anyone else than itself. Too much ressourses there.

The same with Russia. Good old Mother Russia have the largest gas-reserves in the world, and it wouldn’t risk it’s economy by estranging it’s customers. It’s the same for all the big powers, really. China trade with the US, the US trades with EU, and EU trades with Russia. The global economy has become just that, global, and it won’t be risked by full scale wars.

And “full scale wars” have hopefully stopped to exist. Either you have a nuclear Armageddon, or you have strained relationships for forty years before the wish to have a conflict dissappears. The atomic bomb changed EVERYTHING when it comes to full scale warfare.

And if your scenario against all odds and logic happens, Norway would either be a puppet for Russia (after a border-conflict in the Barents-region) or for the EU (they would force us to join to maintain their own energy-interests). We wouldn’t had much to say, unfortunately….

No, if you want to be pessimistic, say that a solar flare hits the Earth in fifty or so years, knocks all satelittes out of orbit and destroys the electricity for half the globe. Say that the enviroment will be utterly butfucked.Say that we will run empty of oil without finding any viable alternatives. Say that all three happens in the same decade. Then, my friend, then we will be truly and utterly buttfucked.

Come ON. I’m a pedantic, cynical, annoying quarreling elitist snob who likes playing semantics. I’m about as far from being a “great thinker” as Kjell Magne Bondevik is from being God.