{"id":596,"date":"2024-12-07T07:00:08","date_gmt":"2024-12-07T07:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/?p=596"},"modified":"2024-11-24T18:10:07","modified_gmt":"2024-11-24T18:10:07","slug":"the-present-danger-the-emergence-of-world-war-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/?p=596","title":{"rendered":"The Present Danger: The Emergence of World War III"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By\u00a0Michael Hochberg\u00a0&\u00a0Leonard Hochberg<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase,\u00a0recently said<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cWorld War III has already begun.\u00a0 You have battles on the ground being coordinated in multiple countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

How should the United States respond to this challenge?\u00a0 Dimon offered the following advice: \u201cWhat we should be thinking about is we can’t take the chance this will resolve itself. We have to make sure that we are involved in doing the right things to get it resolved properly.”\u00a0 When someone of Jamie Dimon\u2019s stature highlights the present danger, Americans would be well advised to consider his assessment.<\/p>\n

In the context of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea (i.e. CRINKs) coordinating their assaults on the United States and its allies, Dimon does not discuss likely outcomes:\u00a0 “I talk about the risk to us if those things go south.\u00a0 We run scenarios that would shock you. I don’t even want to mention them.”<\/p>\n

Dimon does mention one \u201cshocking\u201d\u00a0 feature of our current situation: Putin\u2019s\u00a0threat<\/a>\u00a0to use nuclear weapons.\u00a0 What is the \u201cbiggest risk that mankind faces\u201d?\u00a0 Dimon insists “It’s not climate change, it’s nuclear proliferation.\u201d\u00a0 Associated with the diffusion of nuclear technologies is the increasing chance that nuclear weapons will be used on the battlefield or against major urban centers.\u00a0 “We’ve never had a situation where a man is threatening nuclear blackmail.\u00a0 If that doesn’t scare you, it should.”\u00a0 Dimon urges that the United States should, in effect, exercise prudence in formulating and implementing strategic plans: \u201cWe’ve got to be very careful about what we’re trying to accomplish in the next couple of years.”<\/p>\n

Dimon\u2019s characterization is, at best, just in time.\u00a0 At worst, it is too little, too late.<\/p>\n

On June 6, 2021, the anniversary of D-Day,\u00a0The Hill<\/a>\u00a0posted an essay in which we\u00a0predicted<\/em>\u00a0the emergence of a four-front war breaking out along the maritime rim of Eurasia: Putin\u2019s Russia would attack Ukraine again; Hamas would attack Israel again; Iran would attack international shipping again; and China would take advantage of international chaos to blockade or attack Taiwan.\u00a0 Although the People\u2019s Republic of China has repeatedly threatened Taiwan by deploying naval assets in the Taiwan Strait and within Taiwan\u2019s territorial waters, the fourth front in our prediction has not yet escalated to a blockade or an all-out war.<\/p>\n

Our overall point was that the United States, in the aftermath of the Afghanistan disastrous withdrawal, was perceived as weak.\u00a0 Deterrence had been squandered.\u00a0 The U.S was not prepared\u2014economically, militarily, and ideologically\u2014to cope with this new axis of autocratic, territorial regimes.<\/p>\n

On January 27, 2024, we wrote a lengthy assessment in\u00a0Real Clear Defense of that June 6, 2021 prediction, calling attention to how we deployed strategic intuition, a knowledge of Eurasian strategic history, and, above all, Halford Mackinder\u2019s theory of the \u201cheartland<\/a>\u201d to highlight these geopolitical flashpoints.<\/p>\n

While we are delighted that Jamie Dimon has sounded the alarm that Eurasian geopolitical flashpoints are aflame\u2014that the CRINKs are coordinating their assault on U.S. allies\u2014the goal of policymakers in the United States should be to forestall the scenarios that are too shocking for Dimon to mention.<\/p>\n

For instance, we have suggested actual strategies to restore U.S.\u00a0deterrence\u00a0through a program distributing the industrial capacity to build conventional weapons.\u00a0 Because the allies of the United States are threatened existentially with the use of nuclear weapons, a revision in U.S.\u00a0nuclear doctrine\u00a0should now be considered.\u00a0 If, amid an international crisis, the United States backs down each time an autocrat armed with nuclear weapons threatens their use, if retreat and appeasement become the standard response to nuclear blackmail, then allied and client powers that depend on American deterrence will abandon their military and other connections to the United States.<\/p>\n

In addition, we have recommended, first, deploying market forces to make\u00a0the DoD a better customer<\/a>, thereby reducing the cost of armaments; second, allowing our threatened\u00a0allies to attack the oil and natural gas production\u00a0in Russia and Iran, thereby driving up the cost of energy exports to China; third, putting the\u00a0home front\u00a0on war-time footing, thereby signaling seriousness of purpose; and, finally,\u00a0 recognizing publicly the geopolitical importance of Ukraine, Israel, and even Taiwan, thereby initiating\u00a0a geographically informed grand strategy<\/a>\u00a0for exercise of U.S. maritime power along the rim of Eurasia.<\/p>\n

Now is the time not merely to articulate the present danger emanating from the Eurasian autocratic powers, but also, before it is too late, to present a grand strategy to the American public for the defense of the United States, its client states, and allied democracies.\u00a0 In the absence of such a statement from the Oval Office, the United States will likely stumble from one strategic commitment to the next, squandering deterrence and public support, eventuating in a series of military defeats.<\/p>\n

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Michael Hochberg<\/strong> earned his PhD in Applied Physics from Caltech. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Centre for Geopolitics at Cambridge University and the President of Periplous LLC, which provides advisory services on strategy, technology, and organization design.\u00a0 He co-founded four companies, representing an exit value of over a billion dollars in aggregate, spent some time as a tenured professor, and started the world\u2019s first silicon photonics foundry service.\u00a0 His publications include a co-authored, widely used textbook on silicon photonics and his articles have appeared in Science, Nature, National Review, The Hill, American Spectator, RealClearDefense, Fast Company, Naval War College Review, Gatestone, etc.\u00a0 Michael\u2019s writings can be found at longwalls.substack.com, and his Twitter is @TheHochberg.<\/em><\/p>\n

Leonard Hochberg<\/strong>\u00a0is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) and serves as the Coordinator of the Mackinder Forum-U.S. (www.mackinderforum.org<\/a>). He taught at Stanford University (among other institutions), was a Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and co-founded Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (i.e., STRATFOR). He has published work in Social Science History, Historical Methods, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Orbis, National Review, The Hill, American Spectator, RealClearDefense, Cartographica, Naval War College Review, Gatestone, etc. Len earned his PhD in political theory and European history from Cornell University.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Michael Hochberg\u00a0&\u00a0Leonard Hochberg Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase,\u00a0recently said\u00a0that \u201cWorld War III has already begun.\u00a0 You have battles on the ground being coordinated in multiple countries.\u201d How […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[187],"class_list":["post-596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-opinions","tag-world-war-iii"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/world-war-iii.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=596"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1164,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions\/1164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}