Trouble Shooting Around the World

by Ben Silverman

"The world is not a quiet, settled place," General Schwarzkopf said. He would know. He served as Commander of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, organizing the military capabilities of the United States and all of its allies during the Persian Gulf conflict twelve years ago. He also served on two combat tours of Vietnam and later led the Joint Task Force in charge of US Forces participating in the Grenada student rescue operation. He’s held top posts in the US military for decades and is uniquely qualified to talk about future geopolitical events.

"There are huge ideologies, religious ideologies that conflict with each other in a world where economics are becoming more and more important because the world is getting smaller," he said. "The biggest threat to the security of the US is certainly rogue nations, such as Iraq and North Korea, who are developing nuclear weapons. I was in Kuwait recently, and the Kuwaitis are quite convinced that Iraq is developing nuclear weapons. When they have their weapons, they will bomb two targets: one will be Kuwait City and the other will be some place in Israel."

But General Schwarzkopf warns that we must also pay attention to countries that may not often make headlines. "We tend to forget countries like India. India is a huge military power... When you compare the size of the Indian armed forces and the population of India, and the populations of the rest of the world, you come to recognize that they are a very, very big military power." He warns against immediately assuming that such large powers necessarily constitute enemies, but stresses that the United States must remain on its toes militarily.

The current state of global affairs is complicated and volatile. "We live in a world that is much, much smaller than it was fifty years ago. Smaller, because of two things: we have air travel today that will get you any place in the world in a very short period of time; and we also live in a world of mass communication. Where the rest of the world was kept in isolation from communication, today, it’s no longer the case. The fact that the world is forever getting smaller and smaller for many reasons, makes it necessary to have more understanding around the world."

General Norman Schwarzkopf

"The biggest threat to the security of the US is certainly rogue nations, such as Iraq and North Korea, who are developing nuclear weapons."