The Coming Israeli Super Power in the Bold New World

The world is changing and those changes could make Israel a superpower and its greatest enemy Iran completely irrelevant.

Don’t believe me consider this little story that’s been circulating around the net but hasn’t attracted much attention. Cyber security experts were shocked when a new virus called Stuxnet appeared. Stuxnet targets industrial installations and could conceivably cripple or shut down such facilities. The cyber security eggheads didn’t believe a computer virus that could that could exist but it does.

Experts think that Stuxnet was designed specifically to sabotage Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Reactor. The most logical place that it came from was from Israel and the Israeli government probably created. If true this story could show how the balance of power in the world has changed completely. Israeli is now a superpower, Iran a fifth rate power weaker than Costa Rica.

Israel is a leader in technology with a well educated population, lots of entrepreneurs and a lots of venture capital Israel is second only to the US in many areas of high tech. If Israel can leverage its mastery of technologies in both military and economic applications it could make itself into a regional if not a global superpower.

This has some really profound implications because it means that traditional military power could be obsolete. Iran has spent untold billions of dollars to build up a massive 20^th Century style military machine and to possess the ultimate weapons: nuclear bombs. Yet Israel could sabotage and perhaps shut down Iran’s military industrial complex with a piece of software that costs a few hundred thousand dollars. This mean’s Iran’s military industrial complex is little more than a collection of scrap metal.

The software of course is only the tip of the iceberg coming soon are robot weapons, nanotechnology, and all manner of small high tech weapons Israel could easily master. Israel could soon be in a position to destroy the economy, industry and military of any country at little or no risk to itself.

This could make Israel a sort of superpower in both economic and military terms. The Israeli superpower wouldn’t be a massive military machine like the United States it would be a smaller, more nimble largely economically based power similar to the Dutch in the 17^th Century.

The existence of such a power will make it impossible for any country to establish any sort of hegemony in region of the world. This power could throw a monkey wrench into the plans of any conqueror much as the Dutch and later the English resisted and ultimately destroyed the Spanish and French Empires in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

Israel’s economy is booming and its power is increasing even as its enemies in the Middle East sink into something like a dark age. No real economic growth is taking place in most Arab countries and their only source of income: oil is running out. Israel meanwhile is one of the leaders in the development of alternatives to oil. As Arabs and Iranians grow poorer, Israel will grow richer.

This will make the so called Middle Eastern peace process irrelevant because in a few years the Arab powers simply won’t have the money or technology to seriously threaten Israel. Indeed their only source of income in a few years will be selling old Soviet made weapons to Israeli junkmen. The Palestinians will have the stark choice of starving or learning how to wait tables in Tel Aviv.

The truth is that traditional military power in the 20^th Century style could be worthless. Large armies, huge fleets, stockpiles of missiles and bombs and forces of bombers are largely useless. The new war is based upon the skillful use of new technology and strategy. No number of tanks or nuclear bombs can protect a nation from a computer virus. Nor will any number of fighter planes or submarines protect a country from the new military robotics that will soon be available.

In such a world, a nation with a lot of good computer programmers like Israel is potentially far more powerful than a “power” like Iran. Iran’s power is largely obsolete it has an army of drafted peasants kept in check by a vicious secret police force. Its weapons are mostly copies of old American and Soviet designs and its efforts to project power around the world seem stolen from Nikita Khrushchev’s book. That is Iran’s “leaders” make pronouncements and blustery speeches to the UN and whatever reporter happens to listen to them and give money and arms to “revolutionaries” who share their goals. They occasionally hold a parade to show off new weapons much like the Soviet Communists did.

This of course is an illusion of power because Iran has no ability to influence the world. Indeed its leaders are scared to death of websites and tweets. Their power comes from 20^th century media such as television so they live in fear of modern media.

The pundits largely haven’t noticed this change in the world because their thinking is still locked in the 20^th Century. Twenty years from now Iran will have joined Cuba and North Korea in the Third World Dark Age while Israel will be richer and more powerful than ever.