If you ask most Americans when World War Two started and you’ll probably get December 7, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, as an answer. Another response might be September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. These dates are significant, in that these are when open and sustained military operations commenced, but they definitely were not the start of the war. It would be ignorant to think that Germany just up and decided to invade Poland, or Japan bomb Pearl Harbor, out of the blue on these dates. There were prolonged periods of tension that led up to the open hostilities.
As Preppers, we need to look at the past and current events to extrapolate what our future may hold. As Mark Twain wrote, “…history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes”. Therefore, understanding history can serve as one of the best alarm bells, Preppers have to properly prepare for the future.
Trade, Sanctions, and Economic Warfare
In the days of antiquity, trade wars did not involve economic sanctions, tariffs, or embargoes but actual open warfare. History is full of examples where trade wars turned into kinetic wars. Looking back at why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, we see a large number of economic and trade moves made against Japan, to stop their military exploits in China. Japan had invaded Manchuria in 1931. The United States stopped the exportation of steel, iron, copper, aviation fuel, lubricants, oil, and other petroleum products to Japan. At the time, the United States was the primary source of these commodities to Japan. The United States also froze Japanese assets held in American banks.
When we look at the current situation with Russia, we can see many of the same sanctions and actions being put in place. If China would establish a naval blockade around Taiwan, we would see a move to economically isolate China from international trade, too. With that in mind, perhaps that makes China think a full-on invasion is a better course of action than a blockade. The reality is that there are “trade wars” and then there is economic warfare. For example, in the 1980s the United States and Japan were in a trade war. Japan was flooding the U.S. with Japanese-built vehicles and selling semiconductors below market value to squash competition. What we see with China and the U.S. may have started out as a trade war but it now looks to be turning into economic warfare. China is limiting the exportation of key rare earth minerals if those minerals are destined for military use — unless, of course, you are Russia or Iran.
We have seen other instances of economic warfare. In the 1970s OPEC instituted an oil embargo against the U.S. The oil embargo had major political, social, and military ramifications for the United States. Some of the changes due to the oil embargo are still with us today such as the strategic oil reserves and energy conservation methods. The U.S. had become dependent upon oil from OPEC, and the unfriendly OPEC nations were able to use our dependence on OPEC oil as a weapon.
Ironically, today we have become dependent upon China for many of our goods. Will China also use our dependence on their manufactured goods as a weapon? Deepening trade wars, with sanctions, embargoes, tariffs, and seizing of foreign assets are indicators that a kinetic war is not far behind, especially when the trade war does not change behaviors. The difference between a trade war and economic warfare is that in a trade war, one side is looking for fairer trade for their nation whereas in an economic war one nation is trying to strangle another nation’s economy. There is probably a fine line between the two. Nations can only sanction and embargo so much. When those options are exhausted, there is historical evidence that a kinetic war is not far off.
False Flag Incidents
The Internet is full of speculations on false flag attacks by one country or another. Many Americans may not know that the reason Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939 was in fact due to a false flag attack. But that may not be the only false flag attack that was in the prelude to World War Two. In 1931, there was the Mukden Incident, where a section of railroad track from a Japanese-owned railroad was attacked by explosives. The Japanese blamed Chinese Nationalists but there was a lot of speculation that it was a false flag. This incident was the catalyst that led to the Japanese military to invade resource-rich Manchuria.
False fFag attacks are more than just speculation spouted about by faceless Internet sources. False Flag attacks have been used as a reason to start major wars. We should keep an eye out for false flag attacks as a possible prelude to a wider war.
Sabotage
There is a lot of talk about the “new” Fifth Generation warfare being used by Russia and others. Some aspects of fifth generation warfare are the same as older generations. During World War One, Germany carried out several confirmed and suspected sabotage attacks inside the United States. The largest and best known attacks included the Black Tom explosion in New Jersey where 2 million pounds of ammunition was detonated in an act of sabotage.
The other well known act was the Kings Island explosion, also in New Jersey, that totally destroyed a factory that was manufacturing artillery shells for European allies. Besides these attacks, Germany is known or suspected of attacking at least 40 (I have seen numbers as high as 2,000) US factories or transportation facilities involved with the war effort and 35 cargo ships carrying supplies to Europe. Many of these acts of sabotage were carried out before the U.S. declared war with Germany. One German spy/Saboteur planted and detonated explosives inside the U.S. Capitol building and tried to assassinate J.P. Morgan because Morgan’s bank was helping to finance the war on the part of some of the U.S. Allies.
Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, NATO nations have provided munitions and arms to Ukraine. There have been several acts of sabotage against European NATO defense industries. There have also been “suspicious” incidents here in the U.S. as well, like Accurate Energetic Systems plant and the fire at the Novelis plant in New York State (while writing this article there was another “mysterious” fire at the same Novelis plant in NY) Novelis is the leading supplier of aluminum for the aerospace industry.
On April 15, 2024 a fire broke out at the U.S. Army Scranton Ammunition plant in Pennsylvania. Then two days later, on April 17, a fire broke out at the BAE defense contractor plant in South Wales (UK), Coincidental? Then, German police arrested two Russians with dual German Citizenship for sabotage on German defense companies and spying on U.S. military bases in Germany, also in April of 2024. Also, while writing this, a Polish railroad track that was key in transporting equipment and supplies into Ukraine was blown up in an act of sabotage. In the future, we should watch for an attack on the Polish explosive maker Nitro-Chem S.A., since they are the largest explosive producer in Europe, and recently signed a $310 million dollar contract with the U.S. Department of War.
Another location to watch for in the news is the Repkon explosives manufacturing facility in Kentucky that is still under construction. Due to the disassembly of key components of our domestic military industrial complex, via outsourcing, we have created some major vulnerabilities. It will be very tempting for our adversaries to attack these and other critical manufacturing plants to halt our military machine. What would be the ramifications of NATO losing its ability to make explosives for itself?
Cyber attacks
With the Information Age came the ability of nations to attack critical infrastructure via cyber attacks. Cyber attacks are used daily by nation-states but also by non-nation states. These non-nation state cyber attacks can however be “state-sponsored” which allows a hostile nation to claim that they had no involvement in an attack. We have seen some major cyber attacks in recent years such as the Colonial Pipeline attack that took a major pipeline out of action for several days. Fuel prices spiked in many areas, some shortages were also seen as the combination of less supply from the pipeline and increase demand by consumers who stockpiled fuel as a hedge.
Cyber attacks on western defense contractors have increased since the war in Ukraine started. As we get closer and closer to war with the likes of China, Russia, and/or Iran we can expect more frequent attacks as well as attacks that have more impacts on critical infrastructure, specifically electric grid, telecommunications, and municipal water systems. I
n 2011, the U.S. announced that the U.S. reserves the right to respond with kinetic means to cyber attacks. Specifically, if the cyber attacks are “major” and target our military or economy. We could also use kinetic means if our Allies are targeted too. There is little doubt among the “experts” that the opening salvo of a kinetic war will be a major cyber attack. Therefore, cyber attacks on our grid, communications networks, and even our transportation system could be triggers for a kinetic war.
(To be continued tomorrow, in Part 2.)
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