The American Empire

Recently read and enjoyed Tom Kratman's recent novel Caliphate. Basically it takes the trends first made famous in Mark Steyn's America Alone, and asks what if this goes on? Looking through a mirror darkly at how our global westernized civilization could enter a new dark age. Recommended reading (4 out of 5).

What follows is a long excerpt from Tom Kratman's recent novel Caliphate. Set in a dystopian 22nd Century the excursus helps explain how things got that way.

Excursus
Excerpts from: Empire Rising, Copyright © 2112, Baen Historical Press
Introduction
The United States finds itself now with an empire it does not want, that costs more than it brings in, and that requires the perversion of our values and the suppression of civil liberties we had enjoyed since the late eighteenth century and in some cases the early seventeenth, to the early twenty-first.
How did we get this way? Why is it that only now that we are beginning to be able to discuss it openly? Can we ever get rid of it? Can we keep some parts and dispense with others?
Can we even remain a nation . . .
* * *
Chapter II
We have seen in the previous chapter how various security measures, some sensible and others silly, some intrusive and others not, had never really sat well with the American psyche. It is open to debate whether those measures, even if maintained, could have stopped the attacks that followed their dismantling. What is not open to debate is that the security measures adopted at the beginning of the century were dismantled, and that attacks followed.
Seven bombs had been introduced into the then United States, and one into the United Kingdom. A further bomb was stopped by Israeli security forces as terrorists attempted to bring it in over the shore. Sadly, because it was stopped at sea, and the yacht carrying it sunk, the Israelis were unable to warn us, because they were ignorant themselves, for some days, of the nature of the yacht's cargo.
Of the American bombs, three came through Mexico and three through what was then Canada. A seventh, and the largest, came by sea. The targeted cities were Los Angeles, Kansas City, Chicago, Boston, New York, Houston, and Washington, plus London in the United Kingdom. The Chicago, New York, Houston and Washington bombs failed to create a nuclear detonation. In two of these, Houston and Washington, it was determined that the bombs were simply defective in manufacture. They exploded, spread a fair amount of radioactive material about the targeted cities, but killed very few and did little lasting damage. Two others, Chicago and New York, had degraded over time due to poor maintenance, failing to explode at all. Notwithstanding, on September 11th, 2015, three American cities and approximately four million American citizens and residents ceased to exist, along with just under one million of the king's subjects, including King William, himself.
Initially, no one took credit for the attacks. Then again, given the date, no one really had to. Both sides had taken to injuring each other on any given year's September 11th. It was almost a tradition.
The provenance of the bombs was mixed. The two that had failed to detonate fully were found to be of North Korean origin. One that had detonated was proven to be Pakistani. Two that failed were of very old Russian manufacture. For two others that exploded, we do not and likely never shall know. It is possible that they were of Iranian manufacture.
Only Russia, which had a much clearer idea of American retaliatory capabilities than most others, came forth and provided evidence of how their bombs had ended up in terrorist hands. Several dozen scientists, security personnel, and their families were subsequently shot as an act of good faith cum human sacrifice. In addition, Russia promised and gave substantial aid, especially in the form of oil and natural gas. Volunteers from there for clean up and recovery came by the thousands. Many times the numbers that came volunteered to, though no place could be found for them.
Pakistan professed ignorance while North Korea simply glared defiance and threatened ever more severe attacks should we retaliate. China, allied to both of those, kept its own counsel.
The entire world held its breath for weeks. Meanwhile, the United States did nothing but weep and dig in the rubble. Indeed, not all wept. There was a strong feeling in certain quarters that the bombings had been just. Professor Montgomery Chamberlain, of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor summed up these views nicely when he pronounced the dead, "So many little Himmlers" and called for "one hundred more attacks, until the blood-sucking, Jew-controlled United States is humbled and brought to its knees."
Neither of the major political parties in the United States lined up behind any program of major retaliation, though the President increased security along both the Canadian and Mexican borders . . .
Chapter IV
Within weeks of the attacks, and with no sign of significant retaliation in the offing, a new and highly populist party arose. Officially, it was known as the "Wake Up, America Party." Unofficially, it was often called "the Armageddon Party." It began small, with a speech by its founder, Pat Buckman, in Central Park in New York City. Half a million New Yorkers heard Buckman in person, and perhaps twice that on the TV. Tens of millions heard him across the country. Where the money came from for advanced advertising for the speech is not known. Why the people came is obvious; but for a few defects and decays, they, too, would have been numbered among the dead.
Buckman's message was simple and he wasn't shy about it. He began with the simple line, "Those motherfuckers are going to pay." Buckman didn't specify which group of motherfuckers he meant. As subsequent events were to show he had some very expansive ideas on the subject.
Within months, sixty million people had signed on to the WUA program. Moreover, substantial numbers of Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate likewise defected to Buckman's cause.
In the United Kingdom, the new-crowned king, and king in more than name now, launched a very similar program on his own. Moreover, the new king unilaterally seceded from the European
Union when that body attempted to interfere. The king's subjects met the news joyfully. They were Britons, after all, and had had just about enough . . .
* * *
Chapter VII
The election of 2016 was a foregone conclusion months before the polls opened, though both of the traditional parties, and the mainstream media, denied it until the last. Though both Democrats and Republicans attempted to mount the populist bandwagon, the people weren't listening anymore. Buckman carried every state, even—since Boston and its hard core of liberal voters had been destroyed—Massachusetts, and had unprecedented majorities in both houses of Congress.
Despite predictions, the missiles did not fly within an hour of Buckman's inauguration. He explained why: "We must put our own house in order first. We must . . . "
* * *
Chapter VIII
No one thought it particularly odd when President Buckman, with the overwhelming support of his party's members in Congress, pushed through a bill making a very large number of crimes, most notably politically motivated homicide, purely federal in jurisdiction. Even many of the remaining Democratic and Republican members of Congress joined in supporting this "Federal Supremacy over Politically Motivated Crimes Act of 2017." Some, to include we must suppose, Montgomery Chamberlain, must have breathed a heavy sigh of relief when political speech was not criminalized.
If so, such sighs of relief were soon proven to be premature. Chamberlain was found in his Ann Arbor apartment, wounded by gunfire and then strangled to death by the sole surviving member of a family lost in the Kansas City attack. The killer, former liberal Democrat and former husband and father of four, Mark Moulas, called the police after the murder to inform them of it, and calmly awaited arrest while contemplating Chamberlain's cooling corpse. He confessed immediately, and never showed a trace of remorse. At the subsequent bench trial, Moulas was found guilty and sentenced to a term of ninety-nine years by the judge.
Though there is not the slightest bit of evidence that either Buckman, or any member of WUA, was complicit in the Chamberlain murder, Moulas was immediately pardoned and released.
This murder was followed by the private killing of two left-leaning Supreme Court justices, half a dozen congressmen, forty-seven newspaper editors, and an amazingly large number of academicians. All the murderers except one was pardoned, and that one was not pardoned only, so it would seem, because his motivation for the killing had been that the academician concerned had been sleeping with the killer's wife.
This was perhaps the only truly original and brilliant bit of domestic statesmanship ever engaged in by Pat Buckman. No one previously had ever suspected that the power of pardon, of executive clemency, was also a power of summary execution . . .
* * *
Chapter XII
By early 2018, President Buckman had his "house in order." Similarly, across the Atlantic, the king, too, was ruling with an iron fist. Whether there was collaboration between the two may be doubted. What cannot be doubted was that, under similar threats even rather dissimilar men may act similarly. Unlike Buckman, of course, the king was sane.
The first Muslim containment camps opened near Dearborn, Michigan, in the spring of 2018. Citing the case of Korematsu v. United States, as well as the related cases, Yasui and Hirabayashi, and the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798, the President, by executive order, directed the internment of all male Moslems, to include Black Muslims, over the age of twelve, whatever their citizenship. The Supreme Court, now with two more justices firmly in the WUA camp, endorsed the order, eight to one.
Another pardon from the president was required, when that one dissenting member of the court was killed.
The next major political act of the Buckman administration, the "Redefinition of Religion Act of 2018," defined Islam as "primarily a hostile and dangerous political movement, and only incidentally and dishonestly a religion," and expressly placed it "squarely outside the protections of the First Amendment." This the Supreme Court approved unanimously.
While the order originally purported to intern only males, a subsequent order also directed the internment of females who were related to males implicated in "terrorist or anti-American activities, whatever the degree of relation, and whatever the degree of complicity."
Separate camps were established for women, in order to avoid future pregnancies and, hence, future Moslems. Moreover, any who could produce permission from an Islamic country for asylum, and were not suspected of complicity in terrorism, were permitted to go, under guard, and at their own expense.
The United Kingdom did not establish camps; the prison system was adequate to hold those Muslims believed to pose a threat. For the rest, in a sort of reverse Dunkirk, the Royal Navy dumped them unceremoniously on the shores of France. After all, the EU thought them citizens of the EU and so could hardly object.
It must be said that the British were fairly civilized about the operation, more so than the United States, in any case.
In addition to the camps for males and females, President Buckman also opened camps for the political opposition, such as it was, though these were integrated. No particular effort was made to fill these camps. Instead, the administration published lengthy lists of people it considered enemies of the state. The camps were declared to be "safe zones," where those same people would be protected from the anger of the masses.
Implicitly, of course, Buckman was saying, "Outside of these camps, you will be murdered and we both know you will because I will pardon your killers. Inside, we will keep you alive. Or, of course, you can leave the country. And good riddance."
Many chose to leave, rather than be interned. Many of those leaving left for Canada, which was convenient, prosperous, civilized, highly humanitarian in outlook, and always a willing home for true political refugees.
Even so, the total numbers, exclusive of Moslems, who left for other climes in the years 2018-2020 were only about one million, about eighty-five percent of those going north . . .
* * *
Chapter XV
Whatever his sanity, or lack thereof, no one could accuse President Buckman of not thinking ahead, of not planning for the future. Even while the social order was being altered, his administration and its allies in Congress were busy making the country approximately energy self-sufficient.
This program was unprecedentedly huge. Not only did nuclear plants begin to spring up like mushrooms, every major city was scheduled for a thermal depolymerization plant, solar chimneys began to rise in the deserts of the southwest, all barriers to drilling for oil in northern Alaska were swept away, Colorado and adjoining states were gifted, if that's quite the word, with further plants to begin to convert the huge shale deposits of the Green River Basin, holding enough recoverable oil to meet the needs of the United States for several centuries.
With this level of government sponsored planning and employment, to which must be added the rough quadrupling of the size of the Army, from five hundred thousand to just over two million, the United States experienced a more or less severe labor shortage. This was partially made up by a guest worker program that allowed in millions of Indians and other East Asians. Many of these later achieved citizenship, enough so that "Dinesh" and "Aishwarya" began to compete with "John" and "Jennifer" among most popular baby names.
It should perhaps be noted that Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and even Christian-Animists have never once, as of this writing, set off a bomb or engaged in any other act of terrorism on mainland American soil.
Mexicans and other Latins were generally not allowed in, as much of that newly huge Army was deployed along the Mexican border with orders to shoot crossers without warning. Much of the Army not deployed on the borders was devoted to massive roundups of illegal immigrants, generally. Most of these were, of course, Latin.
The Supreme Court decided that that was not a violation of Posse Comitatus as the illegal immigration had arisen to the level of an invasion and invasion was a military rather than a legal matter.
The resultant loss of revenue experienced by Mexico, in particular, as millions of Mexican citizens were unceremoniously dumped back across the border was to create a massive and rising level of instability within that country. Nor was the loss of revenue the sole factor in the later outbreak of civil war within Mexico, for those same illegal immigrants to the United States—even though cut off from the mainstream of American society—had also seen a society that worked far, far better than Mexico ever had. These returnees saw no insuperable reason why Mexico could not work as well . . .
* * *
Chapter XXI
A Marine amphibious force, of roughly corps size, was dispatched to the Indian Ocean weeks before President Buckman went to Congress to ask for a declaration of war. This was duly granted by substantial majorities in Congress. The form of that declaration was unique in that no specific national enemy was identified. Rather, the declaration of war of 2019 merely stated that a state of war shall exist between the United States of America and "any nation which supports, or has supported, or defends, or has defended, or permits, or has permitted, its soil to be used as a haven for terrorism inspired by the pernicious pseudo-religion known as Islam."
In theory this would have placed the United States at war with most of the world. In practice, Buckman defined the enemy unilaterally, on 1 September, 2019, by insisting in a public broadcast that each of thirty-two Muslim majority nations which had had one or more of their citizens implicated in the "three cities attacks," plus North Korea, surrender unconditionally.
They failed to do so. While the initial demand had resulted in widespread panic and flight from Islamic cities, within a week calm had returned and most people in those cities returned to their normal occupations and lives.
On September 11, 2019, the missiles flew . . .
* * *
Chapter XXII
It seems likely that few, if any, of the people voting Buckman into office had quite envisioned the terrible vengeance he would wreak upon the Islamic world.
A dozen Trident missile-carrying submarines were used for the attacks, six firing from the Atlantic, four from the Pacific, and two from the Indian Ocean. Only about half of each submarine's load of missiles was fired, a total of one hundred and forty-six missiles and seven hundred and thirty warheads, each in the four hundred and seventy-five kiloton range.
Fifty-five major Islamic cities, and many minor ones were on the targeting list. No major city was hit by fewer than two warheads nor more than four, except Cairo, which received five. Riyadh, Medina and Mecca were each hit by three, spaced some hours apart. In addition to those cities, the entire Nile River Valley saw nuclear weapons essentially walked along its length, a tribute of sorts to the significant Egyptian participation in the Three Cities Attacks, courtesy of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Nine missiles and forty-five warheads were sufficient to scour North Korea free of substantial concentrations of human life. The fourteen largest North Korean cities were attacked, and Pyongyang obliterated.
Marines began landing to either side of the city of Dhahran, headquarters of ARAMCO, within twenty-four hours of the nuclear attacks. It fell with little fighting as did its neighbors, Dammam and Khobar. The local populations, excepting only those critical to the oil industry and their families, were driven into the desert to die. As those remaining locals were replaced with Americans, they too were driven off.
The American presence in Arabia was to end only when the last drop of economically recoverable oil had been taken. By that time, the United States had become energy self-sufficient, once the energy assets of the former Canada were taken into account and a full rationing regime imposed. The triple cities of Dammam, Dhahran and Khobar were destroyed by nuclear weapons once the last Americans had been withdrawn.
It is believed that President Buckman's guiding principles governing the attacks were that every Islamic nation which had had a national involved in the Three Cities attacks was to be struck, that major Islamic cities were to be destroyed at a rate of not less than ten for one, that Mecca and Medina were to be reduced to the point that no landmark should remain, and that deaths were to be inflicted at a rate of not less than one hundred for one.
It known that the second and third goals were met. Indeed, no single trace remains of the Kabaa or the Grand Mosque. It is believed that the first and fourth were met as well. Indeed, counting not merely the direct victims of the attacks, but adding to that those who subsequently died of starvation, disease, lack of potable water, lack of medical care for injuries, and the complete breakdown of anything approaching civilization in the Islamic world, it is very likely that total deaths approached eight hundred million, or roughly two hundred to one.
It was the greatest mass murder in history.
Nor should it have surprised anyone. It was not only predictable; it had been predicted. As one Lee Harris, a sophont of the day had put it:
In other words, the only effect on America of a continuation of September 11-style attacks would be an increasingly repressive state apparatus domestically and a populist home front demand for increasingly severe retaliation against those nations supporting or hiding terrorists. But neither one of these reactions would seriously undermine the strength of the United States—indeed, it is quite evident that further attacks would continue to unite the overwhelming majority of the American population, creating an irresistible "general will" to eradicate terrorism by any means necessary, including the most brutal and ruthless.
* * *
Chapter XXIX
The first imperial acquisition, outside of the lodgment on the Arabian peninsula, was Canada. It was that former state's misfortune that, while the United States had been her last line of defense, Canada had been America's first line.
Buckman had hinted all along that Canada must move to eliminate the threat its Moslems presented to the United States. These tacit warnings were ignored, for the most part, though some Canadians living in the United States or who had lived there, tried desperately to warn their countrymen that America was in utter earnest, that it was no longer in a mood to accept the threat Canada's insistence on diversity presented. It had taken fewer than forty terrorists to introduce the nuclear weapons used in the Three Cities Attacks. It was believe that Canada contained more than four thousand more.
Even so, it took a combination of three miscalculations to make the United States move. The core states of the European Union broke diplomatic relations with America within hours of the launch of the retaliatory attacks. Canada, always one with the EU in spirit if not in fact or law, did likewise. Cooperation in terms of border control ceased. The effect of this, though, in the case of Canada, was to rob the United States of any sense of security on its northern border.
The second miscalculation was to admit into Canada some two millions of mainly Moslem refugees from the irradiated ruins of Islamic civilization. A few of these attempted cross-border operations against the United States. Most of these Canada put down. It only took one failure, however, to give the United States all the excuse it needed to invade.
The final miscalculation, on Canada's part, was the assumption that the United Kingdom could somehow dissuade the United States from taking action. The UK, under the new monarchy, busily rounding up its own Moslems and fearful of terrorists entering the Kingdom from Canada, was simply not interested.
Nineteen Regular Army divisions, one dozen divisions of the Army National Guard, plus the Second and Fourth Marine Divisions, rolled across the border just before dawn on 11 May, 2020.
Despite the gallant resistance put up by the main elements of the Canadian Forces, notably the Royal 22nd and Twelfth Armored, which died in defense of Quebec City, the Royal Canadian Regiment and Royal Canadian Dragoons, shattered in the forlorn defense of Ottawa, and the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and Lord Strathcona's Horse, butchered in detail in a hopeless defense of the long western border, Canada—rather the thin strip of well-populated area that roughly paralleled the border with the United States—fell quickly.
It is both interesting and sad to note that it was only those most despised by the government of Canada, and its ruling party, who actually proved willing to defend that government. Those who had most despised their own forces, and who had themselves signally failed to fight, soon found themselves the center of attention of a country-wide sweep. Almost as quickly they found themselves in various well-guarded logging and mining camps in the cold, cold lands of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories . . .
* * *
Chapter XXXII
Mexico had been a vital trading partner for the United States for many decades. This trade continued, even after the completion of the wall between the two countries, until the Revolution broke out and grew beyond the ability of the government of Mexico to handle.
Even then, President (now, as a practical matter, given the repeal of the 22nd Amendment and the control he exercised over every aspect of American life, "for life") Buckman did not intervene. Canada, with its thirty-five-odd-million people, not all of them averse to American occupation and Anschluss, had been comparatively easy. Mexico, with one hundred and thirty million people—almost to a man and woman loathing the United States, and not without reason—was a patently tougher case.
Nonetheless, following a series of attacks on the wall between the countries, Buckman ordered the armed forces to intervene. It was to be fifteen years and as many as ten million lives, before anyone could, with a straight face, call Mexico pacified . . .
* * *
Chapter XXXIV
The precedent of Mexico established, Buckman felt very comfortable invading Cuba, not because there were any numbers of Moslems there and not because it represented a threat, but merely because he was a child of the Cold War and could hold a grudge.
It was only that the United States armed forces were so tied down in Cuba, Mexico, Canada, and the Arabian peninsula that allowed the Latin and Caribbean states to retain that measure of independence they enjoy today. The price of retaining that independence was, however, high. Each remaining independent nation (except for Brazil which was frankly too large and powerful to be all that easily intimidated) was required to sign on to a heavily amended update of the Rio Pact. This Protocol, as it was called, required each to expel or intern any Moslems found within its borders, to provide either military formations for the use of the United States, or their equivalent value in money or goods and, in the latter case, to permit free recruiting by the United States. The Latin states were also required to submit all questions of foreign policy to the United States for approval, and to suppress within their borders any movement founded upon disloyalty or opposition to the United States.
As Buckman said, at the convention, "I can't take you all on at once. We all know this. But I can knock you off one or two at a time. Choose wisely."
In the end, only Venezuela chose unwisely. It was transformed from a sovereign state to an imperial province in 2023. Most of the troops for the expedition were other Latins, acting under American command pursuant to the 2022 Protocol to the Rio Pact . . .
* * *
Afterword
It would have been pleasant to report, had it come to pass, that President Buckman had somehow been overthrown, and that he had been tried for his many crimes and hanged. Sadly, this was not to be. Rather, he passed away quietly one night in 2036, leaving us his legacy: an empire we don't want yet can't get rid of, the enmity of most of the world, a crushing military burden, and damage to our traditional civil liberties that has yet to be fully undone and may never be.
As pleasant as it might have been, however, and as pleasant at it may be to contemplate, in all probability it would not have mattered. Once the United States let down its guard while at the same time not removing—even assuming it was possible to remove—the causes and reasons that caused us to be hated throughout the Moslem world, the Three Cities attacks became inevitable. Once those attacks took place, Buckman, or someone just like him by another name, became equally inevitable.

The Last Centurion

John Ringo The Last Centurion (Aug 2008) Baen Books

A prolific author whose work I've enjoyed since A Hymn Before Battle came out in hardback. I still have that hardback (signed) and all his other novels as well. I did enjoy this latest Ringo novel but feel the style he used worked against it very much. The fact it's styled as a blog journal that we are reading years after the fact online is a style choice I would have disapproved and said rewrite (after all the first draft only took 9 days). The last novel in a similar style I read was Emma Bull and Stephen Brust's Freedom & Necessity which is styled as a series of letters in the epistolary style that was last popular in the 19th Century. I didn't like that style then, and updating it to blog journal style (with wife edits for added annoyance factor) is no improvement. The style just kept getting in the way of enjoying the story for me. "Reader Trance" as the late Jim Baen referred to it proved elusive. Far too much tell and too little show is the great weakness of epistolary styles. Another is the inability to put down anything the epistles' author or authors don't already know -- though as an online journal of events composed years after the fact you can avoid the worst of that. At least we were spared any "Let me check my notes" and comments must have been disabled. ;)

Beyond the stylistic idiosyncracy of it all, it is an interesting read. Mostly because it touched on those matters of interest to me. Various subjects such as climate change and global pandemics finishing up with a nice series of military action-adventures as our hero returns home and then finds like the hobbits returning to the Shire their travails aren't quite over yet. The one thing that annoying me about the non-fiction parts was the lack of footnotes and cites. After all if the intention is to inform and/or persuade then some pointers on where to look would go a long way. Otherwise we should just assume that its preaching to the choir and judge it solely by its entertainment value. If footnotes weren't a possibility, then an afterward or appendices would have been nice. David Drake may think they are bad art for an author, but I think of such as more in line with those 'making of' bits on the DVDs and uninterested persons are free to move on.

That JR has done well with ensembles of characters in his other novels pursuing actions in multiple locations argues that such a format with events being seen through the eyes of participants would have been much more engaging. Possible viewpoints would be the retired farmer in Arizona, hero's dad, his farm manager, anyone in Detroit, various military & senior government officials all showing their actions and the various failures of the world in general and the US in particular to deal with the travails in the novel. The other weakness was forcing the single viewpoint character we have (through the journal he's writing) be the only viewpoint in that all the action had to be through his eyes and thus he has to wind up going everywhere exciting and taking part in the action and only telling us about the rest.

Ringo is best with action and characters and dialogue and the chosen style here works against all of that. Even so I'd still give it a 3 out of 5 and recommend you check out in paperback or digital versions, but even though I've a hardback and will be keeping it. I find various bits and pieces fascinating myself, I know this sort of thing is not to everyone's taste.

Other novels by John Ringo that I have unreservedly enjoyed are:

A Hymn Before Battle, Gust Front (5 out of 5/read this!), When the Devil Dances, Hell's Faire

March Upcountry, March to the Sea, March to the Stars, We Few (all co-authored with David Weber)

There Will Be Dragons

The Road to Damascus (with Linda Evans) [A Bolo novel]

Vorpal Blade (with Travis Taylor)

http://www.baen.com/author_catalog.asp?author=JRingo

is a list to all his currently published work.

I would only caution against his Paladin of Shadows series:
Ghost, Kildar, Chooser of the Slain, Unto the Breach, and A Deeper Blue

which is best characterized as over the top men's adventure fiction

http://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html?thread=760769#t760769 gives a very amusing review of the early books in the series and John's reaction to same. "Oh, John Ringo, NO!"

A Dark Beginning

A bit lengthy this.
Inspired by Europe's postings on biowarfare, Iran and the coming WWIII. (Aren't we up to at least IV by now?)

Bioweapon possibilities from the 20the Century.


http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/opapers/op9/op9.pdf
Is a nice little file on the 1971 Aralsk, Kazakhstan smallpox outbreak and Soviet Biowar Program.


Yekaterinberg suffered a similar Anthrax? outbreak in 1979. It is interesting to note that no one under the age of 24 was ever diagnosed as having contracted the agent. Anthrax is not so choosy in its choice of victims raising the possibility that it was in fact some new related agent that targeting older, middle-aged individuals preferentially.


In 1990 and 1991, Russian scientists found a way to splice Venezuelan equine encephalitis (a brain virus) into the genome, or DNA, of smallpox. The result was a "recombinant chimera virus" called Veepox. It looks like smallpox under the microscope but isn't. Nor did the standard vaccines work against it.


Similarly Variant U Ebola which Biopreparat had in storage in Vector in weaponized form (planned for deployment on Soviet ICBMs but was overtaken by the collapse of the USSR) was another of their prime weapon developments.


At its peak Biopreparat employed 25,000 people and many left for jobs abroad and took samples with them (no doubt to enhance their value to their prospective employers) including it is believed samples of Variant U Ebola.


And in the 21st Century the possibilities just keep getting worse.

The recent discovery of IL-4-gene-added-smallpox as a possible supersmallpox variant based on experiments in mice using IL-4-gene-added-mousepox. The mousepox variant was intended to be a new and effective sterilizing agent for mice but instead attacked their immune systems and killed them even those mice vaccinated against standard mousepox. A human specific variant using smallpox is expected to be just as lethal to humans. Standard smallpox cases have a 30% lethality dropping to 0% for vaccinated individuals, hemorrhagic smallpox has a 98% lethality dropping to 50% for vaccinated individuals. Such a supersmallpox variant, it is believed would by analogy to the mousepox variant be 100% lethal in humans regardless of whether they were vaccinated or not.


Similarly the ability to map the genomes of various agents such as plague and polio already have been done and then to synthesize them from the gene map from scratch is a technology that already exists.

The weaponization of gene therapy techniques if they can ever get that to work is another nightmare scenario.

It has been demonstrated that putting together a bioweapons program with properly trained people is easy and cheap compared to nukes. The properly trained people being the important thing as errors and misfortunes in the USSR's bioweapons programs repeatedly demonstrated.


All of the above would argue against the Iranians in their current fiscal straits spending so much money as they certainly are on missiles and nuclear weapons both. If they had such mass casualty WMDs, then they should announce their existence as a way to deter their enemies from carrying out hostile/aggresive actions.


In Saddam's case he was under UN sanctions to give up all WMDs but for political reasons domestic and foreign wanted to intimidate others into thinking he still had them. So aside from a few hidden leftovers what we wound up with in Iraq was a regime that claimed to have no WMDs ("wink, wink, nudge, nudge") right now but had had them in the past (and could you please lift those sanctions now?) This led to a just-in-time concept of WMD development/manufacture where the regime had squirreled away all the necessary hardware and raw material such as the several hundred tons of yellowcake recently shipped from Iraq to Canada (purchased somewhere in Africa perhaps?), plus a bunch of dual-capable factories. The idea being that the day sanctions ended it was back to business as usual, and a reconstitued Iraqi WMD capability in days to weeks at most. Certainly the amount of chemical weaponry that turned up just in Amman, Jordan and was discovered less than a day before it would have been used to gas about 80,000 of the capital's populace would argue he had such weapons. Certainly his conduct was such that he convinced everyone including all the world's major intelligence agencies that he did have at least a minimal WMD capability that would only grow worse over time. In the end, he failed to deter anyone and instead by his aggresive actions provoked the United States into attacking him.

Today with US oil imports approaching 70% of all US consumption any threat to the flow of oil in the Middle East is a threat to numerous vital US interests - economic, political and military. Given the current hyperpower status of the US, provoking the US is foolish without some means to deter or defend against US responses.


Today it is Iran and its leadership that is behaving in a belicose and reckless fashion. Threatening genocide against the Israelis and WMD attacks against the US and its allies.
If the Iranian government doesn't want to go the way of the Ba'ath party in Iraq (best case) or get a serious overdose of Instant Sunshine (worse case), then continuing to threaten to use such capabilities as soon as they are developed and deployed is not the way to prosper. It is in fact precisely because of their belligerent rhetoric that is seems unlikely that Iran has any serious global WMD capability that they can use at this time to include biowarfare agents. Some argue that because biowarfare capabilities are so easy to develop that Iran almost certainly has them and if attacked would use them. If that is indeed the case, then a nice backchannel communique to that effect would certainly calm everyone down, since it would go a long way to proving that (barmy rhetoric about 12th Imams aside) they are rational actors as they have had a WMD capability yet Israel and the US have not been attacked by them.


If they continue developing the missile and WMD technologies, then while they may get lucky and stymie any action politically until after they do indeed have global WMD capabilities and/or regional nuclear missile capabilites. Sadly, so long as they go out of their way to convince everyone that they are not rational actors, possession of such WMD capabilities will not act as a deterrent towards their enemies but as a provocation.


When someone keeps saying that soon as he gets a gun that he is going to shoot you dead, do you ignore him or call the cops? Sadly in international affairs it is a state of nature out there and the only cops as it were are the US and its allies.* You can wait and maybe millions will die or you can act now and stop a potential genocide before it starts, but if you act now you'll never have the certainty of knowing you were right, but at least those millions will not die.


In the case of Iran and its many terrorist proxies the lack of deterrence if you are proved wrong and millions do die is that there is no deterrence possible.

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2003/09/three-conjectures-pew-poll-finds-40-of.html
As Wretchard points out, this ends badly all around but most particularly for the 'usual suspects'. If you don't know who's guilty then surely "God will know his own." (Also referred to as Option Zero.)



*As for those who would like to call someone else. Recent events in Georgia would argue against calling Russia and the Chinese complicity in the ongoing genocide in Darfur agues against calling them.

Welcome

I wanted to try for something lighter as a brief perusal of my profile might suggest but just can't help myself. Comments are currently disabled as I don't want the hassle of fighting bots, spammers, or even well ment commentators (like yourself hopefully ;)).