What Happens Next?

Two weeks off line helps clarify the issues we face – here’s a somewhat depressing laundry list

The US

The US is the engine of the world’s growth and its military guarantees the freedoms of Europe and Israel.

However it is now sliding to isolationism because its people, assiduously misinformed by their MSM, want to retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan. And the American democracy usually ends up doing what the people want.

Withdrawal will trigger the same horrors that followed the abandonment of South Vietnam – but this time the sufferers will include Americans.

That’s because the Vietnam war was a containment action against China and Russia, and US withdrawal just ceded the peoples of a few small and poor nations to Communist tyrannies.

But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are against foes sworn to destroy the US, and fleeing the battlefield will embolden them to resume their attacks on the US, which with its open southern border is highly vulnerable.

If, as is probable, those enemies inflict mass casualties on American soil, the US, having abandoned offense will move to defense – finally building those border fences. And it can do that – it’s is quite capable of feeding and equipping itself, and gets almost all of its oil domestically, from Canada, and from Mexico.

So from a US viewpoint, isolationism is fine – Americans will be safer and get richer.

But China will lose its biggest customer, Europe and Israel their protector, and Africa its benefactor.

The EU

The EU is a confederation of nations which, with the sole exception of the Brits, have spent the last century losing wars. So, not surprisingly, their only diplomatic weapons are those of the defeated -subterfuge and appeasement.

Thus, instead of using force to recover their hostages from Libya, the EU used bribery:

During a meeting with Col Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Mr Sarkozy agreed to help the country with a nuclear-powered project to desalinate seawater…

Mr Sarkozy’s visit to Libya and the nuclear deal both came immediately after the release of six Bulgarian medical personnel and one Palestinian, all of whom had been sentenced to death for allegedly infecting hundreds of children with HIV.

Desalination is commonly used here in the Southern Med, and the fuel used is, er, Libyan oil:

Libya is Africa’s major oil producer and one of Europe’s biggest North African oil suppliers…Libya has proven reserves of 29.5 billion barrels of oil and a production capacity of 1.4 million barrels per day. Italy, Germany, Spain and France account for 74% of Libya’s exports.

So this has nothing to do with desalination, and everything to do with nukes.

The Libyan dictator gets a package that will burn French enriched uranium to produce plutonium. Just add a nuclear waste treatment plant, and Voila! – he has nukes.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t matter – he’ll just use them to bully the Southern EU. But it sets a precedent for the EU’s existential foes. Its fast-growing Islamic communities will be emboldened to extend their de-facto Sharia zones, and the Russians will leverage their oil and military to take control of the EU’s economy.

So the EU, like all weak empires, won’t make it.

The Brits

If Brits follow the precedent of the 1930s, they’ll eventually get fed up with appeasing the EU and the UK’s un-assimilated minorities.

But it’s hard to judge how the pampered kids one sees on London streets would deal with the privations their grandparents faced – bombing, rationing, mass death.

And if the Brit worm is to turn, it’ll need a shock – a big recession, high unemployment, a deeply unpopular government, and a decent alternative.

Still, all of those are quite likely now, so on balance the Brits seem likely to survive the wreck of Europe.

Israel

Israel faces an existential war sometime soon.

But it currently has very weak political leadership and is under massive pressure from the US (and constant whining from the EU) to cede the West Bank to Fatah’s kleptocratic killers. If that happens, all of Israel will be open to attack by the most ancient rocket, since said killers would be just 12 miles from Tel Aviv.

With the West Bank ceded Israel has zero defensive depth so the next war is bound to be nuclear.

If Israel gets better leadership, and its weapons industry delivers, and its kids decide to fight, then that war will be won.

But with fading US backing, it will be a close run thing.

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Otherwise, things look great.