Charles Hugh Smith’s blog “Of Two Minds” is an excellent read for those of you who are beginning to look outside the mainstream for different political and economic perspectives, including the motivations and activities of the so-called “Deep State”.
His latest blog entry “The Ultimate Long Game: Autarky and Resilience” speaks directly to those Standardistas who understand that today’s mainstream political parties (and their cadres of establishment loyalists) have no willingness or ability to acknowledge the very new and very difficult world we in the formerly privileged west are all now entering.
Smith includes a description (from Mike Lofgren) of what the “Deep State” is, from a US perspective:
“I use the term to mean a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.”
He suggests that today, at least some elements of the Deep State believe that neocon military interventionism as a doctrine has been a total disaster for the USA.
He goes on to state that the “Emergent Deep State” in the USA is formulating a new long game strategy focussed on a completely different philosophy:
While many understandably view the Deep State as being wedded to globalization and centralized one-world power structures, I see the Emergent Deep State in the U.S. pursuing a much different Long Game: autarky (self-sufficiency), and the geopolitical influence that flows from an abundance of the FEW resources, my term for the essential resources of food, energy and water.
(These are related, of course; with no energy and no water, you won’t have any food, either.)
In addition to the FEW resources, autarky requires a culture of innovation, flexible social structures and multiple ladders of social mobility.
To Smith, the Deep State understands the coming challenges of climate change impacts and the loss of fossil fuels:
The Emergent Deep State is keenly aware that geopolitical influence in the future will rest heavily on the potential impact of devastating crop failures, the resilience of nation-states in terms of water / food /energy supplies and the ability to export surplus energy and food to friends. Put bluntly: enemies starve, friends get to eat–if they recognize the value of what you’re offering.
Not every nation has the social and economic flexibility needed to survive the future. The key dynamic is the resilience of the institutions that make up the nation-state and its Deep State: a nation-state with rigid hierarchical elites, little social mobility, limited FEW resources, a brittle social structure and a fear of innovation is a fragile nation-state that is one reasonably good famine away from collapse.
One simple comment that Smith made struck home with me, and our situation here in NZ:
When push comes to shove (and it will), nothing will have any value except food and the resources needed to grow it: water and energy.
Food and water are two things that NZ can become very, very good at. And other countries will want those resources from us, either by fair means or foul.
Smith talks about this as the critical FEW (i.e. Food Energy Water) resources which are going to make the difference in the future, especially in combination with a nation that exhibits a highly flexible, adaptable and decentralised cultural/societal competence.
Currently no political force in this country is talking about these issues as being pivotal. Perhaps it’s time to convince them to do so.
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