The Volcano Rumbles
I can be Johnny one note on some issues. One of them happens to be that what happens to our south has a better chance of killing us than anything the jihadis ever do. The jihadis can hurt us. They can kill cities. They can ravage infrastructure and screw the economy royally. Europe and East Asia went through worse 1937-45 and recovered. Incredible pain but they recovered.
South America has the potential to meltdown completely producing a Volkswanderung on the level with the fall of the western Roman Empire or Europe in 1945. Because these polities have teetered for so long without imploding there is a feeling that the worst case is just a set of horror stories. So Europe thought after they escaped each crisis up to 1914. Then the dice went unlucky and the whole thing blew.
Between the failures of the Washington Consensus, the pressures caused by the WOSD and historical structural imbalances South America has the potential to unravel the way Congo or West Africa did. Let us take Congo as an example. As Zaire it had been a basket case for decades but somehow sort of held together. Things kept getting worse by stages but never quite broke. Adjacent civil wars in the other Congo, Angola, the Rift Valley states, Sudan, and the CAR would at intervals spill over. Then in the mid 90's they all spilled over at once. Some four million people died [give or take a million] and a huge area in the east Congo passed into Mad Max land. It has been called Africa's first world war, sucking in every army from every faction of every one of its neighbors plus five other armies with no common frontier and the usual collection of leeches that feed on the dead bodies of nations [Serb mercs, Hezbollah, Al Q...].
The Columbian CW has already spilled into Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, Brazil and Peru. Sendero is on the upswing. Bolivia almost came apart last week and isn't out of the woods. Venezuela is still in a slow motion civil war as it spirals towards chaos and bankruptcy. Argentina seems to have plateaued after free fall but it could just be a dead cat bounce. Brazil has social and drug problems that could choke a horse. DC seems unable to focus on anything beyond Baghdad and the permanent electoral campaign. Mexico is being kept alive on high petrol prices plus the money sent back by illegal expats in the states.
Yes everything COULD muddle through.
Yes I tend to see the glass darkly and melodramatically.
However if it starts melting down you are talking tens of millions of people who are going to run for Miami and the Rio Grande. I doubt our current political and media culture will allow harsh responses on a timely basis. Most will be terrified refugees but many will be armed and desperate. Many of those will be people who wish us harm. Forget the ideology of the book, this could be CAMP of the SAINTS time. We are talking Mariel x 100 to 1000.
posted by scott 10:01 PM