The Worst-Case Scenario
Part I: Peak Escalation
From Tuomas Malinen’s Forecasting Newsletter.
Issues discussed:
Developments in Ukraine and the Middle East hint ‘peak escalation’ approaching.
Most of the recent escalations serve no other purpose than creating pre-conditions for a major conflict, possibly World War III.
The biggest worry (risk) is a detonation of a nuclear weapon in Europe.
First I was planning to publish a piece on the Great Crash of 1929, but after I received quite a few inquiries on what’s going to happen and how I can prepare for it in X, I decided to write a piece explaining my overall view. This will be a rough one, because I am going to concentrate purely on the worst-case-side of things. I urge you also to check my recent interview in Syriana Analysis, with Kevork Almassian dealing with the very same issues than I do here.
Like most of my readers know, I’ve been pondering the global power structure since last fall. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse was a culmination point in a sense that it gathered all my thinking on the subject. I actually revisit the text regularly. I continued with the topic in April speculating on geopolitical developments possibly pushed by a (malevolent) powerful group. Now, I present my thoughts in a worst-case scenario for the world. Naturally, this cannot fit to a single post also because situation continues to evolve, so this will be a start of a series.
In this piece, I will deepen the analysis I presented with Kevork. The last parts will be paywalled, as I present some forecasts. What I conclude in the end can be summarized by noting that I bought some Iodine tablets today. I suggest you to do the same.
The escalation
In November, I wrote on the Apocalypse. Cancelled? that:
Thus, I, for one, do not believe for a second that Mossad and the IDF were surprised by Hamas. They at least allowed the strikes to Israel to happen, if not worse. This adds a serious twist to all that has been written above, implying that there may be a major ‘powerplay’ going on in the background, surpassing the current geopolitical logic and increasing the likelihood that we may end up seeing a highly illogical outcome, i.e., a serious escalation.
What I started to ponder back then were the ways this global force could be pushing the continuous cycle of escalation. I concluded that if my hypothesis of such a group existing holds, shocks leading to a deeper escalation appear in a recurring manner. They would come despite the best efforts our leaders to de-escalate.
The attack of Ukraine to Kursk Oblast in Russia is such one. Ukrainian leadership and even some western leaders seemed to be getting ready to engage to serious peace talks, right before the attack. Why such a useless escalatio now, which will only end up killing more Ukrainian soldiers? It cannot even improve the situation of Ukraine in the negotiation table, because the attack is unlikely to materially weaken Russia, but just irritate Kremlin. I am now thinking that the only aim of this ‘last-hurrah’ attack was (is) to create another cycle of escalation in Ukraine, and to irritate Russia in a hope of an ‘over-kill’ what comes to her response.
I have detailed my thinking on the recent escalation in the Middle-East, i.e., assassinations of Hamas chief, Ismail Haniyeh, and a senior Hezbollah commander Hajj Mohsen, in Crossing the Rubicon. They are just additions to a long line of dangerous and useless escalations, including, e.g., the Israeli strike to Iranian embassy in Damascus, which led Iran to attack Israel directly for the first time ever. At the time of writing, we are still waiting for the response of Iran, which I have been speculating to occur after Olympics in Paris end.
I continue to view the period running from the end of the Olympics till around early October as the most dangerous one, we (the world) have faced for a long time. Let’s now look at the two ‘hot-spots’ a bit more closely.