In my May 28 post I said we face fewer realistic threats now from fellow humans through global war and terrorism. This may seem to be an overly optimistic scenario when we look at the problem nation states of Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea.
In the long view, what I see is that history will mark August 9, 1945 as the last time that nuclear weapons were used against human beings on our planet. We are moving toward a nuclear free world in which all nations will give up their nuclear arsenals.
I don’t see them all destroyed at that time though. There will be a period when some nuclear weapons are left intact in order to guard against possible threats from asteroids and aliens. These will be under supervision of the United Nations and warehoused in the United States, China, and Russia. I see this nuclear free world becoming a reality fifteen years from now.
In the meantime, what about the problem states of Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea. The nuclear threat posed by Pakistan is the danger that the country will be overrun by the Taliban. This is not happening though. The Taliban see themselves as a religious army rather than a revolutionary movement. Therefore, they are vulnerable to armed confrontation by the United States in Afghanistan and by the Pakistani army in Pakistan.
Moreover, their brutal tactics aren’t an effective way of winning over hearts and minds. Pakistan is moving toward modernity at a rapid pace, and the Taliban’s version of Islamic extremism is appealing to a smaller segment of their population.
A significant portion of the Taliban fighters are actually mercenaries fighting for pay and even some of the suicide bombers are desperate people who will blow themselves up to help their improvised families. The war against the Taliban will go on for at least five more years, but the Taliban can never win through force of arms.
The greatest threat that the Iranian nuclear prospect posed to world peace has already been removed, namely, George Bush. Iran wants to be a first rate power in the world and they can’t reach that goal if they are isolated as a nuclear pariah. Iran’s so-called nuclear program has never had an offensive agenda, to destroy Israel, for example. They’ve been in a survival mode looking for some way to guarantee that they won’t be invaded by the United States. The confrontation with the United States has been used as a way to deflect attention away from Iran’s domestic problems. With Obama as president though, this agenda is harder to maintain.
Moreover, I forecast Ahmadinejad will lose his reelection bid and be replaced by someone more moderate. It’s still going to about five years before Iran moves away from its status as a problem nation on the world scene. I see this as inevitable as a younger generation take over in Iran who don’t embrace the politics of confrontation with the West.
North Korea is a dysfunctional state with a million man army and some developing missile and nuclear capacity. It is the last hard core communist state and as such out of step with the rest of the world and virtually without allies among other nations. It’s a country in which a tiny segment of government officials and upper echelon military have wealth and privilege and the vast majority of the people live in poverty and, in some cases, face starvation. The actions of the government are a desperate attempt to preserve their corrupt empire and hang on to absolute power as long as possible.
There are caught up in a crisis of leadership now because their self-designated Supreme Leader, Kim Jung Il, is very sick, and no one is really prepared to take over. As we have seen many times in history, the death of an absolute ruler can easily trigger a chaotic condition within a country as factions fight it out to seize power. Paranoia is the dominant emotion because, in addition to internal threats of upheaval, there is a fear that lack of clear leadership will make the country more vulnerable to outside enemies.
Of the Kim Jung II’s three sons, only the youngest has shown any political ambitions and he has been designed as the successor. He is Kim Jong Un and he is only 26. Although it will take him a while to consolidate power, I see Jong Un successful in his bid to be accepted as the new Supreme Leader. I forecast early 2010 as the time of transition of power.
This will be a good thing for the world because I forecast that he will move quickly to give up nuclear weapons in exchange for help with modernization of his country. In about six years’ time, North Korea will cease to exist as a separate state in a movement of reunification with the south.
In the meantime, for the rest of 2009, what we’re going to see is a lot of posturing and military brinkmanship. There will be another nuclear test and more missile launches including a long range missile. I also see military skirmishes happening between North and South Korea. I see these as naval engagements centering around disputed islands. There won’t be another full scale Korean war though because this would be suicide for the regime. Their poorly equipped army wouldn’t last a week in such a conflict, and all of their advanced military hardware would be destroyed within a single day of intense bombing.
North Korea is not much of a nuclear threat to the rest of the world now and we don’t need to build missile shields against them for the future. The North Korean regime is living on borrowed time and they know it. If we don’t overreact to what they do, all will be well in the long run.
Of course, there is always a danger than nonstate players, i.e., terrorists, will pose a nuclear threat. But we are actually a lot safer now than we were ten years ago. It takes a lot of resources, planning, and coordination to stage weapons of mass destruction attacks across state borders. You would need an international terrorist organization and this is what we’re much less likely to see in the future.
Because of advances in technology, it’s much easier to spy on people that it used to be. Pretty much any electronic communication can be intercepted. And sensitized by 911, our government, as well as other governments around the world, have committed vast resources to the enterprise of terrorist interdiction. Small cells within a country will in the future stage small scale terrorist attacks, but we’ve already seen the high water mark of international terrorism with 911. My forecast is that we will not see anything approaching that level of terrorist violence in the future.
