THE LONG EMERGENCY
The importance of a resilient manufacturing sector at home.
Why we need need to bring manufacturing jobs back to our country
To ensure readiness for the next global conflict, an increased number of factories and manufacturing plants must be built in both Canada and the United States. The unique circumstance we face today is the presence of twosuperpowerson Earth, an unprecedented occurrence in recorded history. Throughout history, military conflicts have been as common as plagues, and natural disasters. This time isn't any different. National spending on military readiness alone will not prepare the civilian population for the next world war. Our leaders need to put in place a comprehensive plan that includes; securing supplies of critical materials, hardening the electricity grid, infrastructure spending and a significant increase in manufacturing capacity. We need to be able to manufacture our own goods here at home. Without the proper manufacturing capacity, and without a secure supply of critical materials during a time of war, we are setting ourselves for a life or extreme hardship and misery.
Can you imagine a world without industrial manufacturing? A world without electricity, automobiles, internet, heat, air conditioning, surgical equipment, ambulances, etc. That's the type of world we (Canadians and Americans) might be headed toward if we fail to prepare for the next global war.
You see, North American companies decided in the 1980s that we did not need to manufacture essential goods here anymore. We could simply outsource it from other countries. We traded away our expertise in heavy manufacturing for service-related jobs. Now we find ourselves in a precarious situation where we are at the mercy of other nations for the production of almost everything we need in our daily lives.
The United States is no longer the leader in manufacturing. It relies on other nations for advanced manufacturing capabilities in sectors such as semiconductors and consumer electronics. I imagine that during the next world war, a coalition of hostile nations will form cartels that will deprive us (NATO countries) of raw materials, natural resources, finished products, and all the other things we currently import (smartphones, batteries, processed rare earths, etc). The comforts of the modern world we have enjoyed for the past 50 years will disappear without the proper manufacturing base and supply of raw materials here at home. During wartime, without the capability to produce enough food to feed ourselves or produce the goods we need to maintain and replace our infrastructure, life here will be pure hell.
What happens if more hostile nations join the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and form a large cartel that for some reason decides to place an embargo on the USA and its allies? The American (and Canadian) economy would grind to a halt. Is that an impossible scenario? No, it's not. It has happened before on a smaller scale during the oil embargo of 1973-74.
From October 1973 to March 1974, OPEC placed an oil embargo on the U.S. and the nations that had supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The American economy took a huge hit because so many things in the industrial economy depended (and still do) on oil and petroleum products. Prices of everything from food to plastics shot up. Inflation reached double digits. Money lending institutions increased interest rates charged on loans. This discouraged capital spending by companies. Home buying also saw a decrease. Industrial nations entered a deep recession.
That was the result of the embargo of a single commodity (oil) by OPEC. What if there is a much broader embargo against NATO countries in the not-so-distant future? How difficult will life become for us here in North America? The list of nations that are possibly considering joining the BRICS is growing. There is mention of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Mexico wanting to join the BRICS coalition. Most of these nations are commodity producers andmost of them consider the United States their enemy.
I don't think the next world war will be fought (at least not initially) in a conventional manner. WWIII will start with our enemies trying to cripple the United States and its allies before the war even starts. At the moment, the U.S. military is still the most formidable in the world. It would be pure madness for any other country or group of countries to try to defeat the Americans by fighting them in a conventional war. The best way for our enemies to increase their odds of winning in a military conflict would be for them to cripple the U.S. financially, take down its satellite communication system and destroy its electrical grid just for good measure.
We're not far off from such a scenario if you think about it. Look at what is taking place in many of the major cities in the United States; homelessness, the opioid epidemic, old and crumbling infrastructure, racial tension, poverty, social unrest, empty office towers, big box retailers shutting down in large cities due to crime, etc. To me, the next global military conflict has already started. It may not turn into WWIII, it might be more of a 21st-century version of the Cold War. Either way, without increasing our manufacturing capabilities, I don't think the USA can win that conflict. China and its allies could do to the U.S. what the U.S. did to the Soviet Union.Bankrupt it and watch it implode.
If the United States is to get serious about preparing for the next world war it needs to get serious about fixing its infrastructure, hardening its electrical grid and bringing back manufacturing jobs home. The United States and Canada need to rebuild a resilient and self-sufficient manufacturing sector. We have to go back to being able to produce more of the things we need here at home without having to rely on other countries.
I believe that as China and the BRICS grow more assertive, politicians in the United States (and hopefully Canada as well) will take the threat of a military confrontation more seriously. This leads me to believe that we will be seeing a surge in the construction of manufacturing plants in North America and Europe for at least the next ten years. My next article will be about a manufacturing company with a fortress balance sheet and a great track record of excellent performance.
But before you go, I recommend you read the excerpt below. It's from The Long Emergency a book by James Howard Kunstler. It's about what a potential collapse of the industrial economy would look like. People in North America and Europe should take the threat of WWIII very seriously. If we don't, we could end up living in a world like the one described below.
The Long Emergency
Surviving the end of oil, climate change, and other converging catastrophes of the twenty-first century.
(Excerpt from the front flap)
The industrialized world is built on cheap energy. Over the past century, we have used the stored energy of millions of years of sunlight - in the form of oil, coal, and natural gas- to create the marvels and miracles essential to modern life. But now the cheap fossil-fuels fiesta is ending, climate change is upon us, and our models of global industry, commerce, food production, and transportation may not survive.
Industrial civilization is in big trouble, and the American people are sleepwalking into a future of hardship and turbulence. James Howard Kunstler, one of our shrewdest and most engaging social commentators, tells what to expect when we pass the tipping point of global peak oil production and enter the long arc of depletion- economic, political, and social changes on an epochal scale - sooner than we think.
The Long Emergency will change everything. Globalism will wither. Life will become profoundly and intensely local. The consumer economy will be a strange memory. Suburbia - considered a birthright and a reality by millions of America - will become untenable. We will struggle to feed ourselves. We may exhaust and bankrupt ourselves in the effort to prop up the unsustainable. And finally, the United States may not hold together as a nation. We are entering an uncharted territory of history.
In the Long Emergency there will be no hoped-for hydrogen economy. No combination of alternative fuels will permit us to run things the way we are running them, or even a substantial fraction of them. We will have to downscale every activity of everyday life, from farming, to schooling, to retail trade. Say farewell to easy motoring and commercial aviation. Life in the Long Emergency will be about staying where you are.
In the Long Emergency we will endure a grueling contest over the world's remaining oil resources. Epidemic disease and faltering agriculture will synergize with energy scarcities to send nations reeling - and reaching aggressively for the means of survival. Desperation at home and a vanishing middle class may provoke extremist politics in America that were previously unimaginable.
Riveting and authoritative, The Long Emergency is a startling vision of what lies ahead, bringing new urgency and accessibility to the critical issues that will shape our future, and which we can no longer afford to ignore.