The War to End All Wars…Again

Some analysts say we’re currently embroiled in the fourth world war, as the Cold War was actually, World War III. Bill O’Reilly usually structures his foreign policy arguments in the framework of the War on Terror being World War III. I say my generation has yet to know what a real World War looks like in our modern information age.

Sure we’ve seen wars both behind the scenes, by proxy and live on cable news in all their inhuman brutality. No matter how precise our missiles are or how honorable our soldiers are trained to be, mistakes happen. Innocent people die. Cities are destroyed and pages of history are summarily flushed down the toilet of destruction. Man’s inhumanity to man bubbles up and boils over shaming us all. That is war and despite the hawkish rhetoric that comes out of this space, I do believe war is a wicked, but necessary evil.

Bill O’Reilly and the folks who think we’re in a World War right now are absolutely wrong. Despite skirmishes, police actions, covert operations and the occasional full-scale invasion, the fact of the matter is none of this is new. Read your history, this is how the worlds been operating since the sovereignty of nations was invented. Somewhere at all times in the world two countries are having a military conflict and whatever is happening on the battlefield is also being controlled by several invisible forces in the peripheral. Since the dawn of the first biblical empire and multiplying 100 times over during European colonialism every country has been tied to every other country in an international game of 7 degrees from Kevin Bacon. But despite everyone on the planet sticking their thumb in everyone else’s pie, there have been only two World Wars.

I believe international terrorism as an instrument of Pan-Arabism is a threat to the civilized world in the same way I think pulling resources out of an inner city populated by mostly Blacks and Hispanics and letting them burn down buildings and kill each other without intervention threatens the safety of Americans far and wide. But let’s not get so overcome with zealous defense of the homeland that we lose sight of the potential threats far beyond Islamic terrorism.

The possibility that there just might be yet another “War to End All Wars” lies not with the jihadi’s but instead with the Red Chinese. I have history on my side here when I say all it will take to set off Armageddon is one military adventure on the part of the Chinese in Taiwan and we will have ourselves a full-blown world war that will make the other two look like paintball and 9/11 like a song that gets stuck in your head but whose lyrics you can’t remember.

The AP is reporting that, “A proposed Chinese anti-secession law would authorize Beijing to take military action to stop rival Taiwan from pursuing formal independence if other efforts fail, a leader of China's parliament said Tuesday.

Wang Zhaoguo, reading out the proposed law for the first time before the figurehead National People's Congress, didn't give any details of what specific developments might trigger a Chinese attack.

"If possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted, the state shall employ nonpeaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Wang, deputy chairman of the NPC's Standing Committee, told the nearly 3,000 NPC members gathered in the Great Hall of the People.

Beijing claims Taiwan, split from China since 1949, as part of its territory. The communist mainland repeatedly has threatened to invade if Taiwan tries to make its independence permanent.”

If the Chinese invade Taiwan, we will most certainly be drawn in to a military conflict with the blossoming superpower. We are politically and economically married to Taiwan by virtue of The Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, which was a Congressional bill, passed in 2000, which provided for greater United States military support of Taiwan. One provision of the TSEA calls for, “…the United States to eliminate ambiguity and convey with clarity continued United States support for Taiwan, its people, and their ability to maintain their democracy free from coercion and their society free from the use of force against them. Lack of clarity could lead to unnecessary misunderstandings or confrontations between the United States and the People's Republic of China, with grave consequences for the security of the Western Pacific region.” (Credit taiwansecurity.org)

For all intents and purposes, if China decides to reclaim Taiwan as her own it will be the modern equivalent to Germany starting World War II in 1939 by invading Poland. In the wake of the Cold War the board has been rearranged and old allies are quickly becoming new adversaries, which could easily mutate in to enemies before you can say, “Oh no, not again!” It is nearly without question that if we become engaged with Mainland China over the fate of Taiwan we will also face their allies in Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea and probably Pakistan. We will have friends in Israel, India, Australia, Japan and probably S. Korea but they will be just as knee deep in doom as we will be facing off the triple threat of China, Russia, Iran and their client nations. We will find no allies in Europe, as they will seek neutrality while continuing to arm the above faction until said beast overruns a nearly defenseless and mostly likely slack-jawed European Union. We will most likely lose or at least greatly expose our beachheads in Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The desire for China et al will not just be to reposition themselves as regional superpowers, but instead they will see death descend upon the Western world as has never been experienced before. That dear reader is a World War. If China deploys their rumored neutron bombs against the West and we respond in kind with our arsenal of over 200 ballistic nuclear missiles that really will be a “War to End All Wars.”

One can only hope that in China cooler heads will prevail and war can be averted. However, when I look in to the horizon of our collective future I do not see morning, I see the mushroom cloud.