The Big Picture

Charts: On a down day when the key Fibonacci retracement level of 1333 is once again under assault it pays to look at both the immediate details of the Long War and the grand cycle that governs the long term outlook.

Long War: American troops in Iraq are now engaged daily against Shiite militias supported by Iran. Casualties in Iraq are greater than in Afghanistan. Obama says he wants to keep 10,000 American troops in Iraq to serve as a trip wire in case Iran invades Iraq, much like the 30,000 US troops in South Korea who also serve as a trip wire, i.e. if North Korea invades South Korea, the US would have to go to war.

The Yemeni Army yesterday lost 10 soldiers in ground combat with Al-Qaeda. It appears that Al-Qaeda is (for the moment) winning in Yemen.

The Berber tribes and the CIA are taking the wood to Gaddafi. The good guys are winning in Libya.

Okay, let's look at the big picture. Shortly after the Bush administration coined the phrase "War on Terror" scholars at the Pentagon rejected this term because it was inaccurate. Terrorism is actually not the main focus of the enemy. Suicide bombers are more likely to hit military targets than civilian ones and the bad guys are even more likely to fight in conventional military units such as what we are now seeing in Yemen.

So the term Long War Against Islamic Extremist Militias was created. But this is also inaccurate and reflects wishful thinking. The Long War encompasses much more than Islamic militias. The first Gulf War was a Long War action and it was against a nation state, Saddam Hussien's Iraq. The three decade long cold war against Iran is nation state vs. nation state. The war in Libya is against a truncated nation state, Gaddafi's rump government. Eritrea and North Sudan are jihadist nation states. Once Syria crushes its "Arab Spring" revolution it will certainly become a jihadist nation state. If Hezbollah were to take full control of Lebanon it would become a jihadist nation state. North Waziristan is pretty much a jihadist nation state and can only be conquered by a conventional army. All jihadist nation states are enemies in the Long War.

The more accurate term then should be the Long War Against Islamic Extremist Militias and Jihadist Nation States. And this is the big picture: Around the beginning of the Christian era, Rome had conquered every major power in the known world except the gigantic Persian Empire to the east. Rome then went to war against all the existing smaller powers, as well as barbarian tribes on the periphery of its empire, and it continued what proved to be a 700-year long cold war with Persia. The historical parallels between then and now are stark. America = Rome. China = Persia. Islamic militias = Barbarian tribes. Jihadist nation states = Smaller powers.

There were three different enemies facing Rome just as there are three different enemies facing America. For economic expansion to gain ground the two different kinds of Islamic enemies need to be steadily ground down and China needs to be held at bay. Sometime in the distant future radical Islam will be defeated and a day of reckoning with China will occur.