Dyer foresees the Future (Future: Tense, 2004)

 Gwynne Dyer.  Future: Tense (2004)

I’ve watched a video of Dyer making the same points as he makes here: Terrorists cause very little damage compared to other risks, but because they choose their targets carefully, they get an enormous amount of publicity. They also get a disproportionate response. These two effects make terrorists seem more dangerous than they are, help spread their ideologies. and lend legitimacy to their claims of political importance. The ripple effects are increased risks of wars between nations.

The context of Dyer’s remarks is the Middle East, the economic and political decline of the Muslim world, and the rise of the West. (An irony he doesn’t emphasise is that the Islamic terrorist groups are incapable of making the weapons systems they use, which they buy from Western sources).

Dyer makes a few predictions, which have failed only in details such as timing and who did what to whom. The general forecast, that the Middle East is the most likely place for triggering a world-wide war, seems at present only to prescient. He also called for a stronger consensus that such a war must be avoided. We can only hope that such a consensus will stop and reverse the current escalation of the quarrel between Israel and Iran.

Dyer says that the Israel helped Hamas establish itself, calculating that political rivalry with the PLO would prevent the Palestinians from achieving their goal of nationhood. The Wiki article on Hamas does state that “Numerous Islamist leaders, including senior Hamas founder Mahmoud Zahar, met with Yitzhak Rabin as part of "regular consultations" between Israeli officials and Palestinians not linked to the PLO.[27]”, which supports Dyer’s claim.

The “new world order” foreseen by Dyer is a shifting in the economic and military balance between the US, Russia and China, expressed in part by proxy wars and skirmishes. Most of those will be in the Muslim world. Terrorism will continue to be a useful bogeyman for any politician who needs some street-cred. In other words, business as usual. Dyer did not foresee Putin’s rise and his goal to Make Russia Great Again.

Dyer is a dispassionate observer of power politics. Power hunger is a widespread human trait. There’s an equally wide-spread hunger for rule by a powerful leader, arising from the mistaken belief that only a strong leader can protect the tribe and keep order. That is one of the main drivers of war.

A book worth reading. ***