Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Pakistan and Mexico Collapse Possible: Why I'm Glad Somebody Else is President

Oh, great:
  • Somebody, possibly Hezbollah, started firing rockets into northern Israel, adding another front to Israel's war
  • Meanwhile, Pakistan's leaders are making Indian chauvinists' claims about the Mumbai attack sound less loopy
  • And now it looks like Mexico may collapse
The Joint Forces Command's "JOE [Joint Operating Environment] 2008" went public in November of 2008, got discussed in a few blogs, and seems to have hit the news this month. So far, it's just barely in America's national news.

I'm pretty sure that'll change as President Elect Barack Obama becomes President Obama.

Sudden Collapse of Mexico: Think Somalia South of the Border

But first, two points:

The Joint Forces Command says, right inside the cover of "JOE 2008:"
"The Joint Operating Environment is intended to inform joint concept development and experimentation throughout the Department of Defense. It provides a perspective on future trends, shocks, contexts, and implications for future joint force commanders and other leaders and professionals in the national security field. This document is speculative in nature and does not suppose to predict what will happen in the next twenty-five years...."
("Joint Operating Environment 2008")
A sudden collapse of the governments in Pakistan or Mexico are "worst-case scenarios," as "JOE 2008" points out on page 36.
Mexico in (More) Chaos: Not Good News
Mexico's drug cartels and gangs aren't making life easy for anyone these days. The country's politicos, judicial systems, and police, may not crack under the strain. Or, they might.

If they do, having to re-schedule those vacations in Cancun will be the least of America's worries. Besides more-or-less-organized crime leaking over the border, I think it's a safe guess that terrorist organizations will be happy to provide humanitarian aid to the suffering Mexicans. In exchange for access to Mexican territory and other favors.

Possibilities like that may be one reason for President Elect Obama's less-than-gleeful expression, after one of his briefings after winning the election.

Anyone Can Become President - But I'll Pass

"Anyone can grow up to become president" may be a cliche, but there's some truth to it in America. Whoever has a shot at it has to have a fairly unusual set of abilities, of course - but this is still a remarkably open society, when it comes to who can rise to the top. Or, head in the opposite direction.

In my case, though, I'm profoundly glad that I'm not president, nor likely to be in the Oval Office. There's some seriously heavy-duty responsibility that goes with the job. I'd much rather be sitting out here, free to opine on what goes on in Washington and the world, without having billions of lives and the course of history depending on what I decide today.

More-or-less related post: News and views: Background:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The fall of Pakistan will jack oil prices up.

and the fall of Mexico will effect the illegal Immigration problem we have already.

North American union will succeed if Mexico falls. Security will be tighter then ever before for Washington. Terrorist attacks from the south will be more likely then ever before.

Brian H. Gill said...

Politics and the Future,

What can I say? You could be right.

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Blogroll

Note! Although I believe that these websites and blogs are useful resources for understanding the War on Terror, I do not necessarily agree with their opinions. 1 1 Given a recent misunderstanding of the phrase "useful resources," a clarification: I do not limit my reading to resources which support my views, or even to those which appear to be accurate. Reading opinions contrary to what I believed has been very useful at times: sometimes verifying my previous assumptions, sometimes encouraging me to change them.

Even resources which, in my opinion, are simply inaccurate are sometimes useful: these can give valuable insights into why some people or groups believe what they do.

In short, It is my opinion that some of the resources in this blogroll are neither accurate, nor unbiased. I do, however, believe that they are useful in understanding the War on Terror, the many versions of Islam, terrorism, and related topics.