The “Forever War” Meets Terminal Decline
Aug 26, 2017 · 2 min read
Prof. Grossman is spot on in his analysis of Afghan policy. So let’s assume he is fundamentally correct in that the war will go on indefinitely. We know that nothing goes on forever, so what could stop it? Here are some speculations from debatehub.org (in no particular order):
- Some other war breaks out and we cannot sustain the fight on multiple fronts indefinitely.
- The fly-over states get tired of sending their children to die and get mutilated in the middle-east and elect politicians who want to pull out.
- The electorate wakes up and realizes that it is much more humane to zip up our borders so we don’t t fight them here. Then we withdraw and use Lamey style air power if they threaten us internationally.
- We simply run out of money. Due to demographics and secular stagnation we might run out of the money needed to fight or it might get de-prioritized to the point that it fades away.
- We resurrect that age old colonialist strategy of installing a strongman to keep the locals in line.
My guess is all of the above will happen and that we will eventually install a strongman. This might sound distasteful but if we are fighting for 20 or 30 years and going broke then it might start to sound more appealing.
There was one way I could think of to keep the Afghan war going:
- We manage to build reasonably priced ground drones that can be deployed cheaply and will truly allow us to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. It will also be seen as a jobs program for our young men who seem to play video games over jobs. Imagine picking up some money operating a Afghan drone from your x-box. Even in this scenario you would need special forces deployed.
This last scenario is scary to me but I have to admit it is in the realm of possibility.
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