I greatly enjoy studying military history. It's less pleasant looking at ongoing conflicts, because they represent failures of diplomacy, arrogance, greed, hatred, or a combination of these factors.
Yet I do learn something of use by studying past conflicts. Despite ballistic missiles, drones, and interceptors with Iran we are fighting a version of World War 2. The battle is over oil, the commodity that led the Tojo regime to attack the US, Great Britain, and Japan's key goal, oil-rich Dutch East Indies. The US had embargoed Japan over its aggression in China, which meant they needed a new source of crude.
What the US public does not seem to grasp today is how information, not oil, may be the commodity that makes or breaks our ability to fight, were we to stumble into a war with China or another near-peer adversary. The chances of either or us making a direct attack the other seems remote, but I'm guessing that in early 1914, few Europeans would have foreseen a global conflict erupting by year's end.
Next time, a war may mean more at home than higher prices at the gas pump. We do produce a lot of our own oil, unlike Imperial Japan. That's no great comfort in 2026. For a long time, I've looked to two works from earlier this century, Richard Clarke's and Robert K. Knake's Cyber War and P.W. Singer's 2009 Wired for War. The latter, with its depiction of massive swarms of autonomous drones, plus denial of GPS and other space-based infrastructure, now has me checking anew with Singer's other work. It can keep you up nights, thinking about how helpless many folks would be if their phone-based maps and other apps began to malfunction. Just the other day, the credit-card system at our local gas station was down. It became a cash-only business. I handed over a 20, because I always carry cash (thanks, Dad, for that lesson); other customers left, not having any cash at all on them. And if all the ATMs were down...well.
In a war, such a situation might not end in an hour. Gizmodo ran an interview with several experts on the topic, including Singer, that I recommend heavily. You may be too tired of reading about the current war to consider a future conflict; if you do, it's wise to do so early in the morning with a favorite coffee or tea cup in hand, not at night.
While there is little an ordinary citizen can do directly to cope with the loss of GPS or access to space because of Kessler Syndrome event in orbit, it's best to at least know why such things could happen that would profoundly change our lives. Many of my students, when asked, could not point to me which direction was west, unless the sun was setting. I told them that it might be wise to learn how to navigate locally with a map, not an app, and to have some cash--a month's worth of expenses would be ideal--locked away. Don't wait until an emergency comes and the ATMs stop working or run dry.
I'm no Doomsday Prepper, but I like to have a month's worth of difficulties in mind. I read about and marvel at the sacrifices out predecessors made during World War 2, such as foregoing new tires (and cars), rationing gas and other strategic commodities. We might be asked to do the same one day. Would we? Every hurricane, snow alert, or rare event such as the COVID pandemic leads the stores here to be sacked, as if the Visigoths had arrived.
Even if merchants could stave off hoarders, restocking shelves might prove difficult as so much of our supply chain relies on smart technologies and just-in-time delivery to manage inventories. An Amazon distribution center would likely find itself paralyzed. Attacks to our communications and Internet might not simply come from hackers or anti-satellite tech but also the destruction of fiber-optic cables and other terrestrial infrastructure that result in few direct human casualties. We have not even hardened our electrical grid to prevent a Carrington Event from damaging them, something that would only (!) cost 10 to 30 billion dollars. I don't think that our short-sighted capitalist system, which worries about the next quarter more than the next quarter-century, can imagine spending the needed money to protect the grid from warfare. That's a government problem, I could imagine a corporate board reasoning.
History again has a lesson for us about failure to anticipate new forms of warfare. Japan lost its war against the Allies for many reasons, such as its inability to match the industry and technological might of the US, but by 1945 they were also out of petroleum beyond what they had stockpiled in the home islands. The US Army Air Corps' and Royal Navy's little-known campaign to bomb oil fields and refineries in what is now Indonesia drastically cut Japan's supply of aviation and other fuels. US subs hunted down tankers trying to bring oil home. The situation became so grave by the time of the final large naval battles in the Philippines, Japanese warships fill up on crude, not refined oil; the refineries in the former Dutch East Indies had too devastated by that point to refine enough bunker fuel.
Part of Japan's failure was not merely its dependence on distant oilfields but its inability to predict, or counter, US-led submarine warfare and strategic bombing. The Japanese, unlike their German allies, thought of subs as hunters of warships. They never used their considerable fleet of advanced subs, armed with the best torpedoes of the Second World War, as the US did. Japan never developed enough advanced aircraft capable of tackling B-29 Superfortresses that set fire to the home islands major cities long before the A-Bombs where dropped.
Iran may well teach us a few lessons yet for countering drones and asymmetrical warfare. But will be learn how to apply such lessons against a larger, better armed nation when we may not gain air superiority over their homeland, while being struck at home where our infrastructure is not hardened, or in space?
I fear that we'll all find out in the next few decades.
Image: Spacewar! computer game, Wikipedia
