7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century

Unless you are not planning to be around in a few years, this book should scare the $#! & @ out of you. Why you ask? Is it about graphic violence and torture? No. Is it about Monsters and Demons? No. Is it about the end of the world? Well - maybe. "7 Deadly Scenarios" is not a "story" book per se. It's an exposition on seven possible scenarios that could confront the US and our military in the not too distant future. It's written by Andrew F. Krepinevich, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He's also a distinguished visiting professor at George Mason University's School of Public Policy. He served for 21 years in the Army and has a PhD from Harvard. You could say that he knows his stuff. The book opens with a discussion about the importance of scenario planning and how it can prepare you for the future - if you are willing to listen. Did you know, for example, that military war game exercises in 1932 accurately simulated a surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that was "unopposed by the defense, which was virtually caught napping"? I sure didn't. More frighteningly, the Army Air Corps protested the outcome of that simulated attack citing, among other things, that "it was improper to begin a war on Sunday". The war games Umpires sided with the Army Air Corp. As we all know - 10 years later the attack on Pearl Harbor actually occurred - proving both the Army Air Corp and the Umpires wrong. This one example brought home to me the dangers and inherent difficulty we face in trying to plan for our security in a future where the enemy doesn't play by our rules. Too often we are so much "in" the present that we refuse to believe or accept that things could unfold differently. What this book did for me was drive home the importance of looking at scenarios, planning contingencies, asking - what if? As the author says more than once - we can't predict the future. However detailed his predictions are, they are only meant to be POSSIBLE futures - sets of circumstances that COULD arise. He points out that we can plan for "risk" - things that we don't know, but have a reasonable probability of predicting; but can't plan for "uncertainty" - things that we don't know, or can't know. By planning for "risk" we can minimize the impact of "uncertainty". I won't dive deep in to the scenarios themselves - I'll leave those for you to read - but here is a tease: - What would happen is Pakistan collapsed and their nukes fell in to rouge hands? - How would we react if terrorist where able to detonate a series of nuclear bombs in major American cities? - Could we maintain order and civility if America were hit with a pandemic illness, much like the last great flu pandemic in 1918? - If the Middle East finally dissolved in to open warfare, and Iran pledged nuclear attack on Israel - would we come to their aid? - In a conflict over Taiwan, how would China use cyber warfare and asymmetrical force to counteract US military might? - If Muslin

Buy this book, or at least demand that your local library buy this book. As a normal person with a reasonable IQ, I am continually frustrated by the inability of our government to look forward. Just two weeks ago someone attempted to take down a plane in its last hour of flight by igniting his underwear, so now our government, in all its wisdom, doesn't want us to have anything on our laps in the last 60 minutes. But one minute before that, it's OK. Huh?! (In my mind, that's reacting to the last threat, not preparing for the next threat.) This book is about the next threats. Not someone taking down a single plane, but massive events that change the world. After reading it, I expect that many interventionists will re-examine their beliefs. That's a powerful statement, but read this book, and you might agree with me.

I got this book three or four months ago and, since then, three of the scenarios have started to play out. A pandemic beginning in Mexico, denial of US naval access by China off their coast, and accelerating disintegration in Pakistan. Andrew Krepinevich has clearly been thinking about serious matters in imaginative and realistic ways.

7 Deadly Scenarios is a logically presented, well written and nicely crafted wake up call for the defense establishment and the Nation. Krepinevich uses history to illustrate how ill prepared we are for the next likely conflict. The scenarios are as believable as they are horrific both in the scope of the threats and our inability to parry them effectively. It is not hard to imagine a few million Mexicans fleeing a pandemic and streaming unchallenged across the Rio Grande. The circumstances leading to each are believable, appropriately documented and accurately portrayed. A smuggled nuke explodes in San Antonio and paralyzes first responders across Texas. The narratives read like a newspaper account should - factual and devoid of commentary or political agenda. The writing style oscillates between scholarly presentation and captivating contemporary thriller. As a reader you get scared by the threats, alarmed by the facts and enthralled by the projections. These are not pie-in-the-sky scare tactics by some minor novelist stacking assumption upon nonsense. Krepinevich is a strategic insider who knows the players; but unlike much of what comes out of Washington, he writes without ideological agenda. He lines up his facts and presents them constantly whether meshed into the narratives or included in the ubiquitous footnotes. Unlike most of the bias that comes out of Washington this author has no deep agenda other than the security and prosperity of the United States. His purpose is as clarion call to warn us to action out of our insistence on preparing for the last conflict not the one we'll surely face.

Looking at the changing face of war in the 21st Century, this book looks at several deadly scenarios that will threaten America's, and the world's, security in the near future. A large part of the world's oil tankers have to travel through two geographic choke points: the Strait of Malacca, between Malaysia and Indonesia, and the Persian Gulf. What would happen to the price of oil, and the world economy, if one was closed because a supertanker was sunk in the most inconvenient spot, and the other was closed because Iran decided to flex its political muscle? Muslim terrorists set off several black-market nuclear weapons in US cities. Beset with internal strife, China decides to take back Taiwan, once and for all. They also send diesel submarines all over the world, to cause lots of economic trouble for any country who considers doing something about it. The Pakistani government collapses, and some of its nuclear weapons find their way into the hands of the more fundamentalist members of the military. There's one about America dealing with a major cyberattack, and one about what will happen after America withdraws from Iraq (faster than it intended). Remember bird flu, from a couple of years ago? Well, it's back, mutated into a form that can be easily transmitted from person to person. Shopping malls and other public places are deserted, hospitals are flooded with the sick and dying, America doesn't have nearly enough retroviral drugs even for emergency personnel, and it takes time to make more. To make things worse, the White House has just gotten word of a human flood of 8 million sick Latin Americans, desperate to reach America. They are scheduled to reach the US-Mexican border in a couple of days. This is avery sobering, and utterly fascinating, look at what the future may hold. It's not an attempt to predict the future, but to show the sort of things that senior planners at the Pentagon are, or had better be, thinking about. Highly recommended.