Shadow Wars

At times, I have been asked by certain friends and relatives, and I must also note that it is a question which occurs in my own mind at times, which is that if God intended for there to be peace in the world, then why is there so much division and social strife based on race and religion? Moreover, why should there even be any divisions and differences based on race and religion in the first place? Why couldn’t we all just belong to one race and one religion and in turn get along with one another, as if people from the same race and religion even get along all the time?

The best answer that I could think of, and the best answer that I could find from both a philosophical and scientific perspective, is comparative advantage. In other words, if these differences and divisions based on race and religion did not exist, then everything would be known by one entity, one race, and perhaps just one person, to the disadvantage and dismay of all others. And as the Quran states in Chapter 49, Verse 13: “Indeed, we have created you from a male and a female, and made you into different peoples and tribes and nations so that you may learn from one another.”

Thus, it is by natural and intelligent design that one person will have what another person does not have and vice versa, and that one nation will have certain things which another nation does not have. The wise man, in a sense, is a connoisseur and lover of all peoples and all nations and is more often than not an entrepreneur rather than a bureaucrat or a politician. 

As a result, this balloon incident with China should be seen through the prism and lens of what we have been describing all along, namely, that the breakdown of global order in the 21^st century has led to global war not in a conventional sense, but in a hybrid sense which in turn incorporates dimensions and facets of cyber, economic, nuclear, political, psychological, social, and technological warfare along with the traditional and conventional means of warfare. Arguably, the incident with China should not be seen as an isolated incident, but rather, as part of a chain of events stemming from a global hybrid war which has been going on ever since the start of the 21^st century when the United States broke its “social contract” with all other countries. 

I have also stated that the rhetoric from old retired American military generals whose pockets are being lined by going on television here in America as well as around the world and misleading other countries and peoples and blinding them and clouding their judgment as to the consequences and implications of American warmongering can lead to a frightening incident like the one we experienced over the course of the last few days with the Chinese balloon. Also, while I could be wrong, my theory is that if shooting the balloon down were the first option and the most viable option, it would not have taken days to shoot it down. 

Rather, the likelihood is that the attempt to hack the balloon’s motherboard on the part of Washington ended up failing, and there was no choice but to shoot it down before it slipped Washington’s grasp. Folks may not know that the “Cloud” and the “Cyber World” is now the real world from the standpoint of international society. Immediately shooting down the balloon in a real-world sense would have amounted to failure where the real war is going on, and based on some insights and knowledge I have received from certain sources who are engaged in these hybrid wars personally, these hybrid wars are also ‘shadow wars’ that are outside of the public view as well as the view of certain politicians, and in turn these shadow wars are much more competitive than many people have ascertained them to be. And to an extent, we are fighting these shadow wars asymmetrically, despite our comparative advantage from a conventional and economic standpoint.

Also, based on the varying altitude of the balloon, which certain experts have stated as going as high as 150,000 feet above ground at one point in time, there is also a matter of the law pertaining to space as a ‘global commons’ that is to be shared rather than a place where one pushes the other out, although it is unclear as to whether the ‘global commons’ laws of space fully apply to this balloon. If anything, it adds to the complexity of the situation we have experienced over the last few days, and it perhaps raises more questions than answers, even though we have done our best to furnish as many explanations and answers as possible and to the best of our abilities.