The Century War III: Geo-political assumptions

Simmons makes several assumptions that I think sound very convincing and more than a bit scary to a lot of readers at first glance.

- Israel will be "incinerated" along with 8 million Jews within the next 15 years. By who? No Muslim power, even united, has been able to take on Israel - or does he think that Israel lacks the sufficient "ruthlessness" when its existence is at stake? Apparently he is talking about a massive nuclear attack, not simply sneaking into Israel with one or two bombs. It would have to be a full scale nuclear attack from Iran. Israel has been very clear that it would launch preemptive attacks. It has also made it clear that it would launch nuclear retaliation. It's a bit more doubtful, but only a bit, that America would immediately launch a retaliatory attack. How many governments of a nation state will be willing to take these risks?

– Underlying assumption to the whole story is that Muslims are some type of nearly invincible force in the world. They are not. 1.3 billion people, more or less. Against five billion, because that is effectively what Simmons is talking about. Whatever his belief that "the better part" of these Muslims are our enemies, 150 million of them are firmly ensconced in nearly one billion fellow citizens in India - and can be counted on to be either quiescent, or "preoccupied", shall we say, with staying alive in anti-Muslim backlash. The Indonesians, who, after all, are the largest mass of Muslims in the world at a bit under 200,000, are not likely to get involved in this. If they did, they have 15% of their population which is non-Muslim, along with their neighbors like Australia, to worry about.

This leaves, of course, the Arabs. It is a little realized fact that there are more American citizens on the planet than there are Arabs. They make up only 15% of the Muslim world, or roughly 200 million people. Other than petroleum and potential martyrs, they have no resources. And the petroleum advantage would go away as soon as the West, China, and India got serious about alternate fuels. The situation Simmons describes would certainly give them the incentive to do just that. No petro-dollars, and how much of a threat would Islamism be to the world? BTW, you should remember that the next time you fill your gas tank or crank up your air conditioner or heater.

The biggest mass of Arabs, the 75 million in Egypt, are hideously vulnerable to attack. Strung out in a 6\500 mile line about 25 miles wide, blowing up the Aswan dam would just about do it, a fact that both Israel and Egypt are well aware of. At least 5 million, and possibly twice that or more, are Christian. Makes for an interesting mix. Egypt was well on its way to modernizing itself in the 19th century and does not share the same type of resentment that much of the rest of the Arabic world does. How this would play out is open to question, but seeing the entire Mulsim world as an undifferentiated threat, as Simmons does, seems to be a poor bet.