Lethal Trajectories (62 page)

Joint sessions and meetings of Congress:
There is a distinction between a joint
session
and joint
meeting
of Congress. A joint
session
requires a concurrent resolution from both houses of Congress to meet and usually hosts the State of the Union or other presidential address. A joint
meeting
occurs with unanimous consent to recess and meet and is usually reserved for officials other than the president such as foreign leaders or dignitaries.

Foreign dignitaries have addressed joint meetings of Congress more than a hundred times. One such leader was Winston Churchill, who gave three addresses to Congress; Middle Eastern leaders including President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, King Hussein of Jordan, and Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin of Israel have also held the floor.

Protectorate relationships:
In international parlance, a protectorate relationship is one in which a sovereign country accepts the protection of a more powerful country. The protectorate retains its sovereignty as a nation but usually relinquishes some part of its foreign policy or international trade sovereignty to the protector nation.

A powerful Arab nation might wish to exert control over another Arab country by use of a protectorate arrangement to avoid the outward appearance of an armed attack. The attack by Saddam Hussein against Kuwait in 1991, for instance, generated an outcry of anti-Arab feeling toward his regime for his actions against an Arab neighbor. This book assumes such a scenario is in play.

Demand-reduction strategies:
Current energy practices are wasteful, inefficient, and expensive, but they also provide target-rich opportunities for significant energy-saving improvements. It has been said that the cheapest and cleanest new power plant is the one that doesn’t have to be built because energy savings were found elsewhere to meet demand. Effective demand-reduction strategies, aimed first at the low-hanging fruit, should include: a) increasing energy efficiency (using less energy to provide the same level of service), b) conservation (reducing waste, recycling, reusing, repairing, etc.), and c) demand reduction (learning to live with less). The net effect, in addition to energy savings, is a reduction in one’s carbon footprint. This can start as a grassroots effort.

Major demand-reduction strategies could focus on: a) transportation systems and practices, b) commercial building and industrial plant and practice retrofits, c) residential dwelling initiatives with weatherization and appliance updates, d) energy production and power distribution systems, and e) personal and institutional changes in energy use patterns, which could include rationing.

In the scenarios portrayed in the book, the citizens of Mankato look to conservation and demand-reduction activities as a first priority due to constraints on oil and energy beyond their control.

The Winter of the Perfect Storm:
The perfect storm projected in this book has an abrupt start and limited timeframe—five months—of maximum hardship. The trajectory could transpire differently absent a Pearl Harbor-type event to rally the nation. An incremental transition into the perfect storm, a course we now seem to be on, could be potentially more devastating as incremental, feel-good actions are taken instead of the aggressive, paradigm-busting solutions needed to address the perfect storm head on.

We live in a nonlinear world where global events seldom unfold in an orderly manner. The two great unknowns lurking in the perfect storm are the collective power it might generate through the chain reaction of global forces in collision and humankind’s ability to adjust behaviors and expectations to the new realities. In the past, cheap energy has enabled nations to grow their way through the economic quagmires they faced, but the ballgame will change dramatically with the loss of cheap energy and reduction in supply.

Pearl Harbor–Hickam Field:
In an effort to reduce costs and streamline operations, the Pearl Harbor Naval Base and Hickam Field were formally merged in 2010.

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency):
We have learned from previous and ongoing wars how deadly IED roadside bombs, detonated by an electronic signal from cellular or satellite phones or other sources, can be. While electronic jamming can be used to prevent electronic signals from getting through, there are collateral issues in the form of degradation in electronic and navigational systems outside the immediate target area. DARPA is now working on Precision Electronic Warfare (PREW) projects that will jam signals in a limited area—perhaps 100 meters in diameter, without disrupting signals directly outside the target area. The use of sophisticated electronic warfare systems has been a core competency of the U.S. military since WWII.

U.S. Special Forces:
The U.S. military has a wide range of highly trained special-forces units in each of its branches to cover difficult situations within their respective areas of control. They include some of the better-known elite units: Navy SEAL teams, Army Green Berets, Night Stalkers and Rangers, Marine Recon units, special-mission Delta Forces, and others. The exact size and scope of operations is classified, but the lethal effectiveness of such units has been proven time and again.

Operation Steel Drum:
Code names are usually given to significant military operations. The D-Day code name was Overlord; the 1991 Gulf War was Operation Desert Storm; the 2003 Iraqi invasion was Iraqi Freedom. Operation Steel Drum, the name given to the fictitious 2018 Saudi War waged to return the regime to its former leaders, describes the conventional military operation that follows the asymmetric actions taken earlier against the Mustafa regime.

Iran:
The chapter references an incident with Iran over Abu Musa Island in the Strait of Hormuz. Historical ownership of the strategically located island remains an open dispute between Iran and the UAE. In addition to its strategic location, the island is full of oil reserves. It could well be a flashpoint for future conflicts in the Gulf and does not endear Iran to the nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The GCC would also appear to be concerned with Iranian support of Shiite movements in Yemen, Qatar, Bahrain, and other parts of the Middle East.

Climate-change debate:
In establishing any set of global greenhouse gas emission targets, the set of metrics used to measure GHG emission intensity will significantly affect the cost and amount of effort required from nations to meet compliance standards. Nations will push to adopt metrics most favorable to their own set of circumstances. For instance, nations with sophisticated economies like the United States or EU members would benefit most from pegging emission targets to some level of GDP. Heavily populated nations like China and India would be better served by relating emission targets to a per capita level. In that China, the United States, EU countries, India, Japan, and Russia together account for over 70 percent of all GHG emissions, it is logical to assume that some form of hybrid formula would be needed to cut a deal. Without concurrence from both China and the United States, any deal would be DOA. The book portrays an arrangement based on a blended GDP and per-capita formula between China and the United States.

Air Force One:
The official designation of any plane carrying the president is
Air Force One.
The pride of the fleet as of 2011 is a pair of heavily modified 747-200B jets. The performance and defensive capabilities of these aircraft are highly classified. The Air Force is seeking to replace these models with a newer version. Two possibilities would be the twin-engine Boeing 787 Dreamliner or the new Boeing 747-800. For purposes of the book, the Boeing 747-800 was assumed to be the replacement for the old 747-200 aircraft.