The United States long ago renamed the Department of War as the Department of Defense.  But I'm thinking on a broader scale.  For example, in 1991 I made two comments about the military action in Iraq.  You'll notice I don't call it a War because no War was declared.  I said, "This is the first of the great resource wars," and while talking with a group of students at the University of Arkansas who were debating how long the war would last, perhaps 2-3 weeks or even 3-4 months at most, I said, "Mark my words, we will still have troops in Iraq ten years from now."  I was right.  We kept planes flying over Iraq (that, to me, it "Troops in Iraq") until we went back and have never left the ground.  Sorry, if we have one US soldier assigned in Iraq, other than guarding the embassy, we have troops there.  Based on my definition, WWII never ended.  Why else would we keep troops in Germany, Japan, and odd places far from home such as Diego Garcia and Guam?

But that's not my main point.  I think we are seeing a new kind of war, more than a war on terror or on drugs (to speak of two more undeclared and will always fail wars).  The war on terror can never be won because there will always be terrorists or at least crazy people.  The war on drugs is even worse, because it allows police to claim our stuff without us ever being involved in a crime.  Then, they get to keep the profits from the sale or the stuff itself.  Oh, you say, they have to make sure we committed a crime first?  What about the grandparents who lost their home to the police because a grandson living with them sold $20 of drugs on their front porch?  It wasn't their fault, it was the grandson's fault!

That's enough that's not on my topic.  My topic?  The New War.  The New War is poor against rich, the desperate against the well armed.  This war is being fought in much of the Middle East, in parts of east central India, in parts of South America, in parts of Mexico, in parts of Southeast Asia, in the Mediterranean Sea, in parts of Africa, and in other places where the governments no longer dare to take control.  Desperate people are doing desperate things to survive.  Governments can use smart bombs to go after specific people in Iraq or other areas controlled by ISIS and others, but at $100,000 a bomb, that rapidly become unworkable when there are no "high value targets" to take out like Osama Bin Laden.  You can't simply bomb people who are fleeing across the Mediterranean Sea by the tens of thousands in boats.  The New War is being fought both by people with guns and people without food and hope fleeing to new locations. 

If we fail to see that having 90% of the stuff in the hands of 1% of the people, and having 10% of the stuff in the ownership of 99% of the people, is a problem, then The New War will surprise us.  When people can only find hope in rebellion, rebellion will occur.  The problem?  Decivilization will make things worse until depopulation will make competition less severe.  How we depopulate the world is up to us.  We already need 4.5 Earths to care for everyone by US standards (which are not all that great for many people by the way).  I see three paths forward: 1) population control (improving but still unlikely to be successful), 2) war (can be very effective population control as past history shows), or 3) natural causes (but famine and that sort of thing are not very pretty).  The choices have already been made (global warming, overpopulation, etc.).  We can only react.  But we will always have that option, if we are alive, to react.  Giving people a decent life has been proven to control human populations, as shown by some country's shrinking populations.  However, we are not going that direction.  We are putting more into the hands of the richest of the rich and making life worse for others, generating The New War.