World War IV is the global war for energy. Over the past 100 years, the dominant source of energy has been oil. Oil is found primarily in the Middle East, so much of the war is being waged there.
Note: This article is written as a devil's advocate in order to understand the current events.
Unconventional War
editThe war is being waged by various means including through economics, culture, politics, religion and military. Each component is being brought to bare as effectively as possible. Currently, the USA appears to be winning the war with multiple influences throughout the middle east and other energy rich regions.
One strategy of the war is to destabalize the nations of the middle east. This ensures that they will be unable to protect their energy resources. The people are being distracted by basic needs for security, water, food and other basic needs. To the competitors in the war, it is of highest priority to make sure the people of the energy rich nation are unable to collectively focus. Unstable governments are very effective in ensuring that the people will be unable to prevent the removal of their oil.
All Muslim nations are being attacked in order to weaken them. If these nations were to unite, they could theoretically control the oil, and cause the economic collapse of the energy poor nations. Political unrest within the region has been fueled by strategic destabalizing events. Organizations such as the United States' CIA have worked to ensure that no unified Muslim nation could be formed. By building public alliances with countries such as Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia, building a unified Muslim nation has been impossible. In the same way, the creation of a unified Arab nation has been defeated. The insertion of Israel into the middle east has ensured instability within the region.
Other regions are also under attack in this war. Venezuela and Colombia have both come under attack in order to control oil exports. Recently, a campaign to pain the Venezuelan President as a dictator has emerged within the United States. This is due to the fear that Venezuela will reduce oil exports to the United States or other strong oil dependant nations.
Iran has been under attack for years. Recently, the election of a new President, who has called for reduced oil exports, has led to an increased pressure. The European Union in particular is focusing on preventing Iran from developing uranium based technologies. The arguement is that Iran could eventually become a nuclear power. This reasoning is similar to the thought police ideas used to justify the War for the Oil of Iraq.
The USA has carefully deployed over 500,000 people throughout the middle east to control the region. The military has established Army, Navy, and Air Force bases throughout the region. This is to deter the European Union, China, Russia, Japan or any other nation from controling the energy supply.
Planned Starvation
editThe goal of the war is for the winning nation to have as much energy as possible until it runs out. With global oil production at or near its peak, the only choices to increase supply are to starve other nations of oil. Starving regions of energy will follow this approximate order: middle east, sub-saharan Africa, Russia, South America, and Eastern Europe. Other nations will be spared temporarily as they are basically satellite nations of the US and are necessary for the American way of life. North and South Africa, China, Japan, and finally the European Union will be starved for energy. As the order of the starving becomes apparent, the remaining nations will be assured that they are close allies and will get everything they need, but as situations change, they will slowly be starved until they can no longer offer any opposition.
Starving, in this case, is more than a simple loss of oil. Many nations depend on large energy supplies to provide food to their people. The people of these nations are being forced to return to the fields in order to provide food for themselves. North Korea was one of the first nations to experience this first hand after their benefactor, the USSR stopped providing them with oil. In some land-poor nations, there is mass starvation and famine as food supplies are reduced. In the end, only people and cultures that can provide for themselves will survive. Many of these nations will break apart into much smaller regions, generally along ethnic, religious, or geographic lines.
Current countries undergoing starvation [1] include:
Oil is of prime importance because it allows multinational corporation to live. Corporations are very similar to Living Things, and desire to survive at all costs. Driven by demand from share holders, and laws which require corporations to increase in value, all tactics will be used to ensure that all resources are provided for their survival. Human beneficiaries of corporations are big winners in the short term, although environmental devestation may ultimately prove that corporations were uncontrolable even by the ultra rich global superculture.
The Beneficiary
editNote: This part of the article is highly speculative; more of a thought experiment than anything else.
It is conceivable that there is one person who is ultimately controlling everything from far behind the scenes. For convinience, this person will be refered to as the Beneficiary. In this scenario, the Beneficiary controls the world by ensuring that all things required to sustain themselves and their family in ultimate wealth remains in place. By using a team of experts, the Beneficiary controls organizations that have power such as the WTO, IMF, United Nations, USA, European Union, multinational corporations, and NGOs. By having each organization working to ensure the position of the Beneficiary, life can be enjoyed without any impediments. Very likely, the Beneficiary would have a system devised to allow a smooth transition to the successor. The key strength of the Beneficiary is the cooperation of powerful organizations and economics. The use of currency and money guarentee that the Beneficiary remains in a life of ultra-luxury.
The worst situation that could happen, in the mind of the Beneficiary, was if the people were to stop using money or desiring products. The Beneficiary needs millions of people working to ensure that airlines, food systems, entertainment and other sectors are successful. If the people were to stop using money, to value unnecessary resources, or to abandon the concept of private land, the system would collapse, and the Emperor would loose all power. The Beneficiary would become equal to everyone else and have to survive based on his skills to his own local community.
This is not to rule out economic collapse of organizations or nations. To the contrary, the collapse of a currency simply allows a transition to a new currency, and helps to ensure that no one else can rise to the relative power of the Beneficiary. Various cases of stagflation, inflation, hyperinflation and deflation have allowed the Beneficiary to maintain control. The people of the United States will fact this automatically after the global war ends, and the people can not make up for the loss of energy from oil.
The Long Term
editAs the years pass, the world will transition from a global community with cheap energy. The future will be dominated by agricultural activities and sun based energy systems. Communities will become intensely local, with trade being provided over streamlined land services, such as rail on roadways. Overall, the human population will drop dramatically from over six billion to a small number sustainable by local agriculture.