Peace in our Time
An unwinnable war may be the best kind for a late-stage degenerate empire. It shuts down the opposition as ‘traitors,’ keeps ‘the people’ in line as ‘patriots’ and it keeps the money flowing to elites
Tuesday, October 1st, 2024
Bill Bonner, writing today from around 20 west longitude...on our way to a funeral
Our story so far...
George W. Bush set up the East-West Forever War by announcing that we were at war with ‘terrorism,’ which will never go away entirely...and then telling the world that ‘you are either with us or against us.’
Back in 2003, most nations were neither.
The attack on Iraq was a warning to them all: play ball with us or we’ll hit you with the bat. Then, beginning in 2022, they saw that their money was no longer safe either. The US and its allies wouldn’t hesitate to seize assets or cripple an economy, at will — even of countries that had done the US no harm.
And now, the West has turned another card... and shown itself ready to kill on a much larger scale. Israel has taken warfighting (or murder, depending on which side you’re on) to a new level. Its assassinations, booby traps and bombings have shocked just about everyone. The leader of Iran has gone into hiding... and the rest of the world shivers in awe or fear.
In the West, the elites take pride and comfort. No enemy can escape them. Their sophisticated tech can find him... and their surgical bombs can take him out, along with his whole neighborhood. Neither his family... friends... people with the same last name... his pets... or anyone living anywhere near him can get away.
Seeing the danger, the ‘other side’ closes ranks. And just as they sought workarounds and alternatives to the dollar... they now seek new tactics and new strategies to save their lives. They look for solidarity with nuclear friends in Moscow and/or Beijing to give them a little protection.
Kamala, Joe, Tony... and Donald... say... they are working hard for ‘peace in our time.’ But maybe not.
And so... the two sides face off. East versus West. And now they battle it out in the ‘march’ areas of the Western Empire — the eastern Mediterranean and the Eurasian steppes, using local allies to do the dirty work.
How do the two sides match up?
What the West, and particularly, Israel, has is a tech advantage. What it doesn’t have is an unlimited supply of manpower. The West has the expensive, super-duper, gee whiz new weapons. But the East (perhaps best illustrated by Russia) has the brute force and staying power.
Superior technology should be decisive. But it is not always. In WWII, for example, Germany had a technological advantage over the Soviet Union. But more sophisticated technology is also more expensive to produce, takes longer to learn, and tends to be less reliable and less easily repaired on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, the Germans could not match the Soviets in raw materials (notably oil), manpower... or in the Soviet Union’s ability to put large quantities of basic tanks and planes into action. At Stalingrad, for instance, Soviet tanks famously rolled off the assembly line and directly into battle.
And recall the French Indochina war. The French had a huge technological edge. They had planes, helicopters and tanks — most of them from the US (they even employed private American pilots to ferry supplies to their jungle-based troops).
At Dien Bien Phu, the French officers assumed the Vietminh — with little more than their own muscles — could never drag heavy artillery over the mountains... across rivers... and through hundreds of miles of jungle. They also relied on their own airpower to keep Vietminh from massing too much of their firepower near the French base.
They were wrong on both counts. Manpower and determination beat techpower. The commander of the French air units in IndoChina, who had promised that his planes could protect the troops... and provide supplies and reinforcements as necessary... was so distraught he committed suicide.
General DeGaulle, then President of France, warned John Kennedy not to repeat his mistakes. But he didn’t get the chance. He was assassinated, and the US went on to make almost exactly the same errors, but on a much larger scale.
The Middle East is a whole different ball game. But the same danger awaits, in urban jungles as well as green ones. Bombing a conventional enemy might bring him to heel. You can then announce victory... and give a speech to the joint session of Congress. But street fights with cheap-tech, decentralised ‘terrorists’ produce casualties, and no clear path to victory. That’s why our sources still insist that Israel wants to avoid a full-scale ground war.
Are they wrong? We don’t know. But next week marks the first anniversary of the October 7th attack by Hamas. Netanyahu might want to mark the occasion with more than just a speech. He might not be able to resist the same mistake the French made at Dien Bien Phu, repeated by Americans fifteen years later. And Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, is urging him to do it:
‘The right move now for America would be to tell Israel to finish the job. It’s long overdue.’
But there may be more to it. An unwinnable war may be the best kind of war... for a late-stage degenerate empire. It shuts down the opposition as ‘traitors,’ keeps ‘the people’ in line as ‘patriots’... and it keeps the money flowing to the elite.
More to come...
Regards,
Bill Bonner
Market Note, by Tom Dyson, Investment Director
The Primary Trend tells us whether we’re in a bull market or a bear market. The Dow/Gold ratio is our main indicator of the Primary Trend.
The Dow is an index of thirty great American companies, the type of companies the biggest fund managers in the world like to own. Apple, Amazon, Boeing, Disney, JP Morgan and American Express are all Dow components.
The gold price shows us the long term purchasing power of the dollar. Combine them together and the ratio reveals the Primary Trend. You get the real, currency-adjusted performance of the big US stocks, revealing the Primary Trend.
Above is the chart from the 2008 crisis until now. The Primary Trend was UP from 2011-2018, but has been heading DOWN since. It’s not obvious on the chart, but last week, the Dow/Gold ratio made a new multi-year low, meaning, we’re in a BEAR market.
Best thing for the American people is to stay out of war.
There is no such thing as a "winnable" war. If one nation blows its competitor-opponent into the Stone Age, the conqueror becomes responsible for the conquered's welfare and restoration. If the conqueror shirks that obligation, another nation (or coalition of nations) will pick up the slack in some form or another. If the conquerer merely absorbs the conquered into his system/sphere of influence, his overhead increases there as well. This idea was best expressed in the slogan popular under Bush 43, "You can win the war, but you can't win the peace." At some level, maybe intuitively and maybe consciously, and somewhat unwillingly, we learned this lesson in WWII, and ever since, we have fought "police actions" instead of wars, seeking not to destroy or conquer, but merely discipline. The approach/policy has been an expensive, disastrous failure. The Romans did succeed in literally wiping Carthage off the map, but did that "success" solve/eliminate Rome's problems? Best always. PM