What Will This Century's World War Be?

I was reflecting today on the build up to the Second World War. That munitions war was preceded by a money war --- currency battles and trade battles. I don’t know if I can remember anytime during my lifetime when there seemed to be so much tension between the major economies as there seems to be now. 

Trump campaigned on rhetoric about pegging down China for its unfair trade practices. He has done nothing about that since being elected, probably in hopes that China would fulfill their undertaking to pressure North Korea into ceasing its nuclear weapons program. China has not delivered, and now there is no reason for Trump to not tighten the screws on China. The USA will block Chinese banks and companies trading with North Korea from the dollar exchange system. Sixty-two percent of international currency transfers are in dollars. The dollar is how oil is bought. The dollar is how most big trades occur.

Trump has also now imposed trade sanctions on Russia. Companies that assist the Russian arctic oil industry will be blacklisted on the international dollar bank transfer network. Of course, Europe, which is dependent on Russian petroleum, is miffed. Trump’s actions are a threat to European investors in Russia’s oil industry. What a way to drive Germany and Russia into each other’s arms.

Russia will retaliate. It doesn’t have the economic clout to do it with trade embargos, but it can do it with cyber-attacks. Russia has a army of several thousand hackers for such purposes. If you are in the USA and your bank’s ATMs all go down, or the power goes off over a wide area, or the CME loses its computer network, we’ll have to wonder.

Trump has also put Canada, Mexico and South Korea on notice that the USA doesn’t consider itself obligated by its trade deals. I would not be surprised to see various nations co-operate to set up a bank transfer process that does not depend on or even accept dollars. If that happens, the dollar will likely tank.

One has to wonder what the big war of the 21^st century will be. In my opinion, the Seven Years War was the first of the world wars. This eighteenth century war was followed by the nineteenth century Napoleonic Wars. Then came the twentieth century with its major wars. Of course, the centuries prior to the 1700s each had their big wars.  I expect that this century will see some kind of major shooting conflict. Maybe it’s shaping up now. I don’t think Trump will be president when it happens. It would be hard to impeach him now, but after the mid-term elections, if the Democrats make big gains, there may be enough votes to send Trump out on the Richard M. Nixon Memorial Skids. This won’t abate world tensions. It will be too late for that.

Conor MacNessa

In pre-Patrick Ireland were a few remarkable kings. Cormac MacArt. Niall of the Nine Hostages. Conor MacNessa. 

Reigning over Ulster during the early part of the first century A.D., Conor MacNessa was a patron of warriors, scholars, and poets.  It is Conor about whom there is told this interesting tale. A brain-ball, fired by Cet MacMagach, a champion from Connaught, sunk into Conor’s skull. The occasion of the conflict was a cattle raid.  Conor died of this infliction, but not for seven years. His physician would not remove the brain-ball, saying that to do so would cause death instantly. Instead, he prescribed a moderate lifestyle for Conor, advising him to avoid all excitement. Conor was to live with a calmness that did not characterize kings of that time.

 Conor succeeded at this pacific existence for seven years until one day the sunlight suddenly turned into darkness accompanied by unusually violent lighting and thunder. Conor asked his druids the meaning of these perplexing events and was told that in the East, in one of the many countries under the rule of Rome, a unique man of more noble character and loftiness of mind and beauty of soul than any man who had ever lived --- a God-man who had lifted the lowly, enlightened the ignorant, and brought hope to the hopeless --- a man of unsurpassed love whose touch healed the blind, the deaf and the lame, and who actually raised the dead --- had been crucified between two thieves by the Romans. 

Conor grabbed his sword and cried “Show me the accursed wretches who did this base deed!” and burst forth from his courtiers and into the storm, through a stand of trees, hacking their branches as he did so, and shouting “Thus would I treat the slayers of that noble man, could I but reach them!”  From this passionate exercise, the brain-ball was expelled from Conor’s head and he immediately died.

Biggest Threat to World Peace?

I don’t know if Americans get that many of us outside of the USA view the United States government as the greatest threat to world peace today. Americans are typically friendly folk. Individually, I like Americans. Yeah, they are sometimes unaware of the wider world, or even their own at times, but they are typically friendly and helpful. Well, there are some places in the northeast on account of which one could be forgiven for thinking I must have fallen onto my head before I made that statement. But I find that even in those places, they are normally friendly when I act as though I expect them to be.

My beef is with the war mentality of successive administrations. Trump has not broken the trend. Several weeks ago, he approved a raid in Yemen, in which more than a dozen civilians were killed, including the 8 year old daughter of an American citizen that had been deliberately killed by an American drone. Execution without trial.

Look, I get that Hillary probably would have led the country into World War III instead of just leaning that way. I mean, she supported almost every war fought by the USA in the past 25 years. A full quarter century of war mongering.  Good practice at being president. Her attitude was typified by her comments regarding Gaddafi after he was tortured and executed: “We came; we saw; he died.”

Trump has issued his travel ban. He doesn’t want people coming from Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen or Somalia. Other countries have terrorists. Interesting that in 2007 General Wesley Clark stated he had seen a memo attesting to war plans against these same seven countries. The travel ban may be part of an overall war plan. Maybe we’ll see the USA provoking these countries soon to create conditions to “justify” going to war.