I had to write this for college, so I figured it might be a good topic for people to debate about.
If the last four hundred years of human history were going to have a label, it’d be “the Rise of the West”. While the western world has always had superpowers, it’s only been in the last half millennia that the West has been the unquestioned rulers of the world. But that trend is about to be at an end. If global trends continue, then the next hundred years can only be known as the “rise of everyone else”. China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey are all on the verge of making the jump from a local power to a global one. Using past history, we can see that this will not be a bloodless transition. From the Rome and Sassanid wars, the Crusades, and the Mongolian Empire, history shows us that cultures don’t like other cultures, especially when one culture has the ability to become dominant. This means that the world is inevitably leading towards global conflict. I believe I can make the safe assumption that no one wants another world war, especially not one that involves nuclear powers, which would mean that the situation has to be changed. Considering that the West is currently the only group of powers, it falls to us to do this. The question then is how to do this. Again, we should look at history and take lessons from the two largest empires that have ever existed: the British Empire and the Mongolian Empire. While the British Empire was the largest empire to have ever existed, it took over four hundred years to build, and was largely the result of superior technology, economy, and naval warfare. The Mongolian Empire, on the other hand, expanded to almost the same size in under a hundred years, without any sort of strong economy or technology backing them. When the British conquered a territory, they spent time building the local infrastructure, improving the land, and so forth. When the Mongols took a territory, they did it by riding down anyone who could pose a threat, then generally anyone else just to make sure, before looting and pillaging what they could and moving on. The regions they took were devastated for years. Just through looking at the basic facts, it’s clear that if the West is going to avoid a global war, it needs to stop the emerging superpowers before they can become a threat. And since it needs to do it quickly and devastatingly, it should use the Mongolian example, and annihilate the other powers.
This wouldn’t be nearly as controversial an action as people would probably think. In reality, it has clear rational basis in foreign policy. The concept of a preventive war, where a side attacks another under the basis of inevitable conflict between the two in the future, is a common military theory. While this type of war is technically illegal under the UN charter, no one ever follows that anyways, and it’d probably be a bigger internal controversy if we actually did. At the same time, what I’m proposing is more along the lines of a pre-emptive war, a first strike against the powers that will eventually cause a disaster. Now I’m not proposing this out of a sense of jingoism, racism, or because I believe I have a larger right to exist then they do. But the basic fact is that this war has to be prevented to stop the threat of nuclear annihilation, and Western Powers are the only ones that can stop it. It’s upsetting that it’s necessary, but anyone who wouldn’t agree with that it is either wants humanity to die or is living in a fantasy world where everyone is perfect. Annihilating the ability of these countries to resist us is the only way to stop the destruction of the world.
The main question for how to stop the rising power is simple that: how? We can’t use economic issues, as businesses like trading with them, and any sort of massive sanction would hurt us as much as them. We can’t try to divide them, as they’re not even unified, and even one of them becoming a superpower is threat to world peace. Nor can we try to weaken them through internal disasters, such as trying to overthrow their government, because even if it succeeds it would only delay the inevitable, and raises the chances of them finding out and therefore raising public support for a war against us. Therefore, there is only one option: murder. Of the emerging powers, only China, India, and possibly Pakistan have nuclear weapons. Pakistan, however, is too internally weak to be a real threat, and would be more then delighted to destroy India, so they don’t count. While China and India both have missile defense systems, so do the United States, France, Israel, and the United Kingdom, whose systems are generally more advanced than those of China and India. At the same time, China and India are generally assumed to have a total of around two hundred warheads combined. The United States, on the other hand, has 5,400 warheads alone, and if we include the active stockpiles of the UK and France, then that total increases to 5,800. This means that even if their systems can stop 95% of the nuclear warheads we can launch, then we can still hit them with more warheads then they have total. Plus there’s the fact that the more missiles there are, the harder they are to stop, while the enemy missiles would be lower in number and therefore easier to destroy completely. This is assuming they will even have time to get them off, as we can currently use submarines to decrease an enemies warning time to as little as three minutes, barely enough time for the government to decide if the United States is really nuking them out of the blue. But again, I’m not proposing genocide. There is no reason to destroy an entire country to stop it from being a threat. We’d only need to focus on important targets, such as military bases, enemy missile silos, and their capital to disrupt their government, plus maybe a few more at economic centers to lower their ability to recover. That’s all that we would need to it. While it would obviously cause a lot of deaths, it’s obviously preferable to lose a few hundred million then to lose billions.
Economically, this plan makes sense as well and solves a lot of our problems. While some people might say “but we need these countries to trade with”, those people are stupid. We can get by just fine by trading with other western powers. Of our top ten exporting countries, the only non-western power in there is China. Of the imports, only three of the top ten aren’t from the West. Our international trade wouldn’t be very much affected by their annihilation, and what is affected would just learn to deal with it by going to good western powers. It will also help our unemployment rate, as most menial jobs leave the United States to work in poorer countries with economic growth, aka the emerging powers that threaten global stability, so they can pay their employees less but still have enough skilled workers. But under the plan I’m proposing, the complete destruction of these powers, they can’t do that as their workers will all be dead. Thus, they’ll go back to hiring honest working Americans. Plus there is the matter of the United States debt. Under this plan, we would literally cut the debt in half. The reason why this would happen is simple. Half of our debt is held by China, with a smaller amount held by other emerging countries. But under my plan there won’t be a China, and therefore no one for us to pay our debt to, which means we’d of received free money from these people, and who doesn’t want free money?
While I’ve mainly focused on the benefits, there are some reasons people will be opposed to this plan, even though it’s the only way to stop global annihilation. The main concern would be the effect of detonating so many nuclear warheads. They proclaim that this would result in a “Nuclear Winter”, where global temperatures would cool due to the millions of tons of soot that would be released by the explosion and burning of cities, along with apparently destroying 70% of the ozone within five years. However, what most people don’t understand is that this actually isn’t a scientific thought; it’s a political one. A quick look at the scientific method shows that for conclusions to be reached there needs to be experiments. Well has anyone ever detonated thousands of warheads across a nation? The answer is no. Which means real scientists will admit that nuclear winter isn’t proven. Using my own internet degree in nuclear science, gathered through an hour or so of Wikipedia research, I’ve concluded that there’s no basis for this idea. And even if it did happen, why would that be bad? Perhaps these people haven’t heard of a little something called Global Warming. A nuclear winter would be good, it’d lessen climate change. So if it does happen, not only would it be good for humanity, but it’d be good for the environment too.
Another reason against what I’d say would be one of morals. Not that it’s not ok to kill your enemies, as someone arguing that would be against both war and cops, which means they’re a silly pacifist who should go back to their “oregano” farm and stop bothering us. No, the only real moral reasons against this would be that it’s not becoming of civilized societies to engage in the massive destruction. This comes out of the Victorian Era, where the western societies saw themselves as the continuation of the Roman Empire. The Victorian Era, though, was a period of rampant racism, with motives such as the “white man’s burden” and helping out the uncivilized people of other nations. This type of morality is aberrant to any sensible modern man and so shouldn’t be considered. What the people against the morality of this don’t understand, though, is that I’m not proposing that it’s necessarily moral. I’m just saying that it’s needed. If we continue on the path that we are doing, and the only way to deviate from that path is through the annihilation of emerging powers, then it’s clear that we will end up with nuclear war. We can’t be bothered with concepts such as right and wrong. When the British Empire invaded a territory, they didn’t say the real reason, they gave other reasons. “Oh, we’re helping them, it’s for their own good, they need it, it benefits them”. The Mongol Empire, which I already showed was better than the British, didn’t bother with this. If someone asked the Mongols “why are you invading every single nation you can”, they wouldn’t bother with coming up with correct reasons, they’d just say “Cause I’m a son of a ***** and I want to rob them”. This allowed them to be successful. It’s the same type of thing we need to do.
This “Rise of the Rest” is a major topic in political thought. The United States is wondering how to keep its edge over the rise of China and other foreign powers outside of its sphere of influence, and China and other powers are wondering how to be more powerful and keep outside of the US interest. It’s a conflict of interest, and there is no way this won’t result in a national dispute. And the only way nations dispute each other is through war. Ever since World War 2, no Great powers have ever fought each other. As any sort of war between us and them would be for the dominance of the world, it’d obviously be a high stakes encounter, and could only result in Nuclear Warfare, destroying billions on every continent in existence. Mass use of Nuclear Weapons is impossible to stop now. The only thing we can do is limit the destruction they’ll cause, and as the West is the only group of powers capable of doing this, it’s our responsibility to do the lamentable task of preserving world peace.
If the last four hundred years of human history were going to have a label, it’d be “the Rise of the West”. While the western world has always had superpowers, it’s only been in the last half millennia that the West has been the unquestioned rulers of the world. But that trend is about to be at an end. If global trends continue, then the next hundred years can only be known as the “rise of everyone else”. China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey are all on the verge of making the jump from a local power to a global one. Using past history, we can see that this will not be a bloodless transition. From the Rome and Sassanid wars, the Crusades, and the Mongolian Empire, history shows us that cultures don’t like other cultures, especially when one culture has the ability to become dominant. This means that the world is inevitably leading towards global conflict. I believe I can make the safe assumption that no one wants another world war, especially not one that involves nuclear powers, which would mean that the situation has to be changed. Considering that the West is currently the only group of powers, it falls to us to do this. The question then is how to do this. Again, we should look at history and take lessons from the two largest empires that have ever existed: the British Empire and the Mongolian Empire. While the British Empire was the largest empire to have ever existed, it took over four hundred years to build, and was largely the result of superior technology, economy, and naval warfare. The Mongolian Empire, on the other hand, expanded to almost the same size in under a hundred years, without any sort of strong economy or technology backing them. When the British conquered a territory, they spent time building the local infrastructure, improving the land, and so forth. When the Mongols took a territory, they did it by riding down anyone who could pose a threat, then generally anyone else just to make sure, before looting and pillaging what they could and moving on. The regions they took were devastated for years. Just through looking at the basic facts, it’s clear that if the West is going to avoid a global war, it needs to stop the emerging superpowers before they can become a threat. And since it needs to do it quickly and devastatingly, it should use the Mongolian example, and annihilate the other powers.
This wouldn’t be nearly as controversial an action as people would probably think. In reality, it has clear rational basis in foreign policy. The concept of a preventive war, where a side attacks another under the basis of inevitable conflict between the two in the future, is a common military theory. While this type of war is technically illegal under the UN charter, no one ever follows that anyways, and it’d probably be a bigger internal controversy if we actually did. At the same time, what I’m proposing is more along the lines of a pre-emptive war, a first strike against the powers that will eventually cause a disaster. Now I’m not proposing this out of a sense of jingoism, racism, or because I believe I have a larger right to exist then they do. But the basic fact is that this war has to be prevented to stop the threat of nuclear annihilation, and Western Powers are the only ones that can stop it. It’s upsetting that it’s necessary, but anyone who wouldn’t agree with that it is either wants humanity to die or is living in a fantasy world where everyone is perfect. Annihilating the ability of these countries to resist us is the only way to stop the destruction of the world.
The main question for how to stop the rising power is simple that: how? We can’t use economic issues, as businesses like trading with them, and any sort of massive sanction would hurt us as much as them. We can’t try to divide them, as they’re not even unified, and even one of them becoming a superpower is threat to world peace. Nor can we try to weaken them through internal disasters, such as trying to overthrow their government, because even if it succeeds it would only delay the inevitable, and raises the chances of them finding out and therefore raising public support for a war against us. Therefore, there is only one option: murder. Of the emerging powers, only China, India, and possibly Pakistan have nuclear weapons. Pakistan, however, is too internally weak to be a real threat, and would be more then delighted to destroy India, so they don’t count. While China and India both have missile defense systems, so do the United States, France, Israel, and the United Kingdom, whose systems are generally more advanced than those of China and India. At the same time, China and India are generally assumed to have a total of around two hundred warheads combined. The United States, on the other hand, has 5,400 warheads alone, and if we include the active stockpiles of the UK and France, then that total increases to 5,800. This means that even if their systems can stop 95% of the nuclear warheads we can launch, then we can still hit them with more warheads then they have total. Plus there’s the fact that the more missiles there are, the harder they are to stop, while the enemy missiles would be lower in number and therefore easier to destroy completely. This is assuming they will even have time to get them off, as we can currently use submarines to decrease an enemies warning time to as little as three minutes, barely enough time for the government to decide if the United States is really nuking them out of the blue. But again, I’m not proposing genocide. There is no reason to destroy an entire country to stop it from being a threat. We’d only need to focus on important targets, such as military bases, enemy missile silos, and their capital to disrupt their government, plus maybe a few more at economic centers to lower their ability to recover. That’s all that we would need to it. While it would obviously cause a lot of deaths, it’s obviously preferable to lose a few hundred million then to lose billions.
Economically, this plan makes sense as well and solves a lot of our problems. While some people might say “but we need these countries to trade with”, those people are stupid. We can get by just fine by trading with other western powers. Of our top ten exporting countries, the only non-western power in there is China. Of the imports, only three of the top ten aren’t from the West. Our international trade wouldn’t be very much affected by their annihilation, and what is affected would just learn to deal with it by going to good western powers. It will also help our unemployment rate, as most menial jobs leave the United States to work in poorer countries with economic growth, aka the emerging powers that threaten global stability, so they can pay their employees less but still have enough skilled workers. But under the plan I’m proposing, the complete destruction of these powers, they can’t do that as their workers will all be dead. Thus, they’ll go back to hiring honest working Americans. Plus there is the matter of the United States debt. Under this plan, we would literally cut the debt in half. The reason why this would happen is simple. Half of our debt is held by China, with a smaller amount held by other emerging countries. But under my plan there won’t be a China, and therefore no one for us to pay our debt to, which means we’d of received free money from these people, and who doesn’t want free money?
While I’ve mainly focused on the benefits, there are some reasons people will be opposed to this plan, even though it’s the only way to stop global annihilation. The main concern would be the effect of detonating so many nuclear warheads. They proclaim that this would result in a “Nuclear Winter”, where global temperatures would cool due to the millions of tons of soot that would be released by the explosion and burning of cities, along with apparently destroying 70% of the ozone within five years. However, what most people don’t understand is that this actually isn’t a scientific thought; it’s a political one. A quick look at the scientific method shows that for conclusions to be reached there needs to be experiments. Well has anyone ever detonated thousands of warheads across a nation? The answer is no. Which means real scientists will admit that nuclear winter isn’t proven. Using my own internet degree in nuclear science, gathered through an hour or so of Wikipedia research, I’ve concluded that there’s no basis for this idea. And even if it did happen, why would that be bad? Perhaps these people haven’t heard of a little something called Global Warming. A nuclear winter would be good, it’d lessen climate change. So if it does happen, not only would it be good for humanity, but it’d be good for the environment too.
Another reason against what I’d say would be one of morals. Not that it’s not ok to kill your enemies, as someone arguing that would be against both war and cops, which means they’re a silly pacifist who should go back to their “oregano” farm and stop bothering us. No, the only real moral reasons against this would be that it’s not becoming of civilized societies to engage in the massive destruction. This comes out of the Victorian Era, where the western societies saw themselves as the continuation of the Roman Empire. The Victorian Era, though, was a period of rampant racism, with motives such as the “white man’s burden” and helping out the uncivilized people of other nations. This type of morality is aberrant to any sensible modern man and so shouldn’t be considered. What the people against the morality of this don’t understand, though, is that I’m not proposing that it’s necessarily moral. I’m just saying that it’s needed. If we continue on the path that we are doing, and the only way to deviate from that path is through the annihilation of emerging powers, then it’s clear that we will end up with nuclear war. We can’t be bothered with concepts such as right and wrong. When the British Empire invaded a territory, they didn’t say the real reason, they gave other reasons. “Oh, we’re helping them, it’s for their own good, they need it, it benefits them”. The Mongol Empire, which I already showed was better than the British, didn’t bother with this. If someone asked the Mongols “why are you invading every single nation you can”, they wouldn’t bother with coming up with correct reasons, they’d just say “Cause I’m a son of a ***** and I want to rob them”. This allowed them to be successful. It’s the same type of thing we need to do.
This “Rise of the Rest” is a major topic in political thought. The United States is wondering how to keep its edge over the rise of China and other foreign powers outside of its sphere of influence, and China and other powers are wondering how to be more powerful and keep outside of the US interest. It’s a conflict of interest, and there is no way this won’t result in a national dispute. And the only way nations dispute each other is through war. Ever since World War 2, no Great powers have ever fought each other. As any sort of war between us and them would be for the dominance of the world, it’d obviously be a high stakes encounter, and could only result in Nuclear Warfare, destroying billions on every continent in existence. Mass use of Nuclear Weapons is impossible to stop now. The only thing we can do is limit the destruction they’ll cause, and as the West is the only group of powers capable of doing this, it’s our responsibility to do the lamentable task of preserving world peace.
