THE ENDGAME TRILOGY: PEAK OIL, GLOBAL WARMING, AND TERRORISM
Author: Thomas H. Naylor

No empire has ever stood the test of time. This one is no exception to the rule. The American Empire is going down. It faces three imminent, interconnected, indubitable, endgame defining threats -- peak oil, global warming, and terrorism. Not only is our government clueless as to how to deal with these problems, in most cases its policies actually confound them.
The Bush-Cheney response to the cheap oil endgame is to demonize Islam, transform America into a technofascist state, and, through its foreign policy based on the concept of full spectrum dominance, hegemonize the supply of oil in the Middle East so as to keep our economic engine running.
As for the threat of global warming, Team Bush’s response can best be summarized by one word -- denial. Pretend the problem does not exist, and maybe it will go away.
The threat of Islamic terrorism worldwide is a problem of our government’s own making. It is grounded in American arrogance, ignorance, racism, imperialism, and unconditional support for the terrorist state of Israel. President Bush’s so-called war on terror is an insidious campaign to create fear and hatred among Americans and Europeans towards Muslims so as to rationalize a foreign policy aimed at doing whatever is necessary to control their oil in the Middle East.
According to James Howard Kunstler in his provocative book The Long Emergency, the only way to survive the cheap oil endgame will be by becoming “increasingly and intensely local and smaller in scale.” As the cost of petrochemical products soars we will have no other choice than to “downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do and how we do it, from the kind of communities we physically inhabit to the way we grow our food to the way we work and trade the products of our work,” says Kunstler. By downscaling we will use less oil, create less carbon-dioxide, and reduce global warming.
The end of cheap oil will precipitate the demise of globalization as well as the quality of life as we know it in the United States today. Large urban areas such as New York, Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles may soon simply cease to exist as well as airlines, the interstate highway system, the automobile industry, corporate agriculture, and most multinational megacompanies. Large consolidated public schools and humongous state universities will go the way of the dinosaurs. And the federal government will be impotent to protect us.
If there is a solution to the problem of global warming, it may lie entirely with our ability to tighten our belt, cut back on the consumption of hydrocarbons, and come to terms with the problem of peak oil. Unfortunately, there are no quick-fix solutions to either the problem of peak oil or global warming.
If our government is serious about ending the threat of terrorism, it must do six things. First, declare an end to the war on terror. Second, shutter the money-guzzling Department of Homeland Security. Third, withdraw all American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Fourth, eliminate all economic and military aid to Israel. Fifth, discontinue its inflammatory, shoot-from-the-hip, “axis of evil” rhetoric. Sixth, close the Guantanamo Bay prison.
When the dust settles over the Middle East, history may show that it would have been virtually impossible to conceive of a set of policies more likely to provoke terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies than those chosen by our government. Arguably, the greatest threat to America is America itself.
If we truly wish to reduce the risk of attack from abroad, we should close most of our 725 military bases in 153 countries; withdraw all American troops from Europe, Japan, and South Korea; unilaterally destroy all of our nuclear weapons of mass destruction; dismantle our extraordinarily expensive, ill-conceived, untested missile defense system – Reagan’s folly; abolish the National Guard; and create a voluntary citizens’ brigade to reduce tension and restore order in the event of civil unrest or natural disaster. Only then will the threat of terrorism be abated.
Realistically, the prospects for solving these problems appear to be indeed bleak. As our mindless President and impotent Congress try to muddle through, the risk of economic and political chaos is staggering. In response to exponential increases in crude oil prices the dollar could easily tank precipitating an international economic crisis and World War III between the haves and the have nots, between oil producers and oil consumers, and between Muslims and non-Muslims. The endgame is not pretty.
The only way to save the world may be the peaceful dissolution of the American Empire.
Thomas H. Naylor
August 1, 2007