"Welcome to the Grand Illusion" -or- it's all a game for them

All the world's a stage 

I know. I know. I'm showing my age. I equate the many songs stored in my memory often to what I read. After I read these next 2 links, you'll know why I thought of Styx's "Grand Illusion".....

First read this exerpt from Andrew McKillop at vheadline.com:

...."Any country with ‘civil’ nuclear power is at most ‘two screwdriver turns’ from nuclear weapons capability. Great Game 2 strategists, despite their air-conditioned bunkers, might toy with Indiana Jones images of those long-ago imperial tea rooms and moustachioed strategists with solar toupee hats, of Sopwith biplanes and Lee Enfield or Mauser and Remington rifles left over from the 1914-18 war.

If so, they have gone too far in their reverie: they might imagine they have the time that Great Game 1 players had. They might imagine their strategy game only generates occasional and relatively small skirmishes against lightly armed and disorganized enemies, as US and British media likes to present the 2003-2005 Iraq war. They might above all imagine they will find, and then hold abundant and cheap oil and gas resources in the Golden Triangle centred on present day Saudi Arabia.

The Fast Replay

Sadly for them, the replay will be different, and will come to an accelerated end. It has two-only variants: nuclear war or resource wipeout, the second of which is certain and inevitable, while the other remains an option. Sooner rather than later, this endgame choice will become evident -- any responsible citizen, anywhere, should be concerned."

Then...have any of you heard of Thomas Barnett and his book _The Pentagon's New Map_? Well, I saw him talk on c-span last November/December and I was totally mesmorized with all the things he was saying. I think it still may be in c-span's archives or he may have a link on his website but I wanted to link you to one of his blog entries so that you can see the mindset the military has after reading the first link I gave you. He is a strategic planner. What he said totally blew me away when I saw him on c-span.

"Can't we all just get along?"

peak oil