Geopolitics & Military

The End of Gasoline Warfare

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The contemporary American way of war can only continue if huge amounts of relatively cheap energy can be provided, not only to fuel planes and tanks and ships, but to support the immense infrastructure that makes modern war possible. As that surplus of energy wanes, so will gasoline warfare, and the successful military powers of the future will be those that can figure out ways to project power and win battles with less of an outlay of energy and raw materials than their rivals.

The monkeywrench wars

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As the most gizmocentric culture in recorded history, America was probably destined from the start to end up with a military system in which most uniformed personnel operate machinery, and every detail of making war involves a galaxy of high-tech devices. That seems like a huge advantage to most Americans; in practice, it may not be. With the able assistance of Arthur C. Clarke and the Principia Discordia, the Archdruid explains.

The specter of military defeat

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These days, the United States is in conventional terms far and away the world’s most formidable military power, and nearly all discussions of the implications of peak oil for national security and the future of war take US predominance as a given. History warns, though, that military power is not a single uncomplicated variable, and sudden shifts in military technique — shifts that involve radical simplification as often as they involve technological progress — have frequently brought to defeat to the theoretically stronger side. As the world stumbles toward the Peak Oil Wars, the possibility has to be taken into account that the US may face military defeat, not in spite of its military advantages but because of them. The Archdruid explains…