George Rebane

The yuan is too expensive, the dollar is tanking, the US has not a clue about how to pay its debts and revive the economy, China and a bunch of other countries are holding trillions of dollars in their reserves, trade is lopsided, the mid-east is an endless mess, the EU is entering a financial fiasco … – it looks like the time has come to kick the can down the road and take everyone’s eye of the ball for a bit.

So here’s a far out scenario that is not so far out when conniving governments get together.  Obama has now demonstrated to the world that he is inexperienced and ready to compromise American sovereignty at every turn.  He is also a weak president, one who invites our natural antagonists/enemies to take advantage of his tenure.  All this has greatly weakened the world’s premier reserve currency much to the detriment of everyone.  Not that they don’t want us to eventually ‘eat sh__ and die’, but they don’t want us to do it too quickly.  They’re not ready for that just yet, and we appear to be fading too fast.

So wouldn’t an international crisis involving the usual parties be in order, doing what everyone knows they can and want to do anyway.  It seems if we could just cook one of those up in the right way, then the US could show its strength and the dollar would hang on for a bit longer.

From stage left enter one Chinese SSBN (nuclear missile submarine) that somehow penetrates our broad area SSN (attack submarine) patrols and probably the most sophisticated undersea surveillance sonar networks in existence (off our west coast), and winds up less than a hundred miles from  the southern California coast near Vandenberg AFB.  The SSBN opens one of its tubes and launches a missile away from the shoreline.  Over the decades Southern Californians have seen many of these missile launches from Vandenberg to impact areas at Eniwetok and Bikini atolls.  No panic is caused, but inevitably someone in the area east of Point Conception notices that the contrail does not look like it was launched from Vandenberg, it originated from offshore.

What follows is the usual BS about what else it could have been – airliner, amateur rocketeer, weird cloud formation, swamp gas … .  Until those who can tell the difference between a missile launch and swamp gas overwhelm the government’s claptrap, and everyone agrees it was a missile.  While we’re still sorting through the ‘we know nothing’ monologue of Sgt Schulz, the North Koreans, who have just told a western scientist of their new nuclear enrichment plant, start shelling a South Korean island.  On cue, this sets off a new international tension that could become a crisis at any moment.

So now we have a mysterious offshore launch from a Chinese SSBN that was escorted into place by one of our SSNs, and a clear act of war (“provocation” in diplomatic speech) by the Dear Leader in Pyongyang.  Of course, the guy with the goofy crew cut got his shelling orders from Beijing.  And what’s the predictable upshot of all this?

Everyone heads back to the dollar and quits thinking about Ireland and Iran, and the more sinister effects of QE2.  You get the drift here.

Meanwhile, as things develop about the Chinese, they have gotten their pound of flesh by being able to demonstrate their advanced strategic undersea and missile technologies – it will now be easier to accept them as peers of American might.  This makes it easier for Team Obama to push the schedule for America joining the community of nations as they all march toward a happy one world.

Oh yeah, Kim Jong Il gets to have another round of negotiations to ‘defuze’ his latest tantrum, and in the process promises to be good in exchange for goods.  We keep our promises, he doesn’t keep his.  Same ol’, same ol’.  And we throw into the Korean debacle a detour by one or two of our eleven carrier task groups which will rattle sabers with our South Korean ally in the China Sea and Sea of Japan.  Our president comes out looking like a forceful leader who artfully pushed back the communists one more time – the Chinese may even throw in a gratuitous apology for launching their missile in international waters so close to the American coast.

The whole affair will be concluded with a new round of conferences for peace and international co-operation.  The circus will last for months; we will not notice that nothing has changed with regard to our debt, deficits, unfunded obligations, growing government, more liberties sacrificed for ‘security’, a broken educational system, and government employee unions stronger than ever.

The Peace of 2011 will spawn a set of newly minted credentials and newly mended reputations for the administration as keepers of the peace and leaders of a strong America.  Bernanke and the Fed will have more time to think of something else to fix the economy and the Republicans will still be the ‘party of NO’.  What’s there not to like; everyone wins.

But then, what if a Chinese SSBN really did sneak in and get off that shot, and the coordinated North Korean shelling was just part of the overall tactic to take advantage of a dysfunctional leader, gauge his reaction, and show the world the might of an ever rapidly emerging China?  Then next year China announces the re-unification of Taiwan with the mainland, and integrates that country’s significant economy and foreign reserves with its own.  And given the recent revelations about the might of America, no one makes a peep.

[24nov2010 update]  Right on schedule as reported here by Stratfor.