The U.S. Army seems incapable of transferring what it learned in Iraq to Afghanistan. It is attacking the population rather than protecting it, which guarantees failure. The one bit of good news is that the Taliban and al-Qaida are replicating the latter's mistakes in Iraq.

The advent of the new American president, Barack Obama, changes nothing, because in Washington nothing really changes. One wing of the Establishment leaves government and goes into the think tanks and lobbying firms, while another returns from those same places to government. The Obama crowd will not face up to the problem of America's strategic overextension around the world. It is just as globalist, interventionist and imprudent as outgoing President George W. Bush's less-than-stellar administration.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who is being retained in office by Obama, may prove to be the one exception of proven intelligence, responsibility and competence, but he will find that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is hated.

Plan on more mad foreign military adventures, despite the fact that the nearly bankrupt U.S. government will now have to print the money to pay for them. Fourth Generation War opponents will end up winning most from whatever new wars the United States stumbles into during Obama's term of office.

Perhaps the brightest sign on the horizon for 4GW entities of all types seeking to undermine and destroy the existing structures of states around the world, not just those that represent Islamic jihad, is the world economy.

If the current world recession becomes a world depression, which looks more and more likely, states everywhere will be weakened. For reasons Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld lays out in his book "The Rise and Decline of the State," citizens now expect the government to take care of them economically. If they have no jobs and face penury, they will be ready if not eager to transfer their primary allegiance from the state to something else. A big winner here will be gangs of every sort.

This bleak strategic overview of conditions and developments around the world in the coming years should not surprise us. We live in a time toward the end of the world of states. A growing number of states will vanish. Still more will become hollow shells, within which 4GW entities thrive while protected by "state sovereignty." As globalism collapses economically and the global elites are revealed as emperors without clothes, the motto of every state will become "sauve qui peut" -- "save what you can."

If you're lucky enough to have a time machine, set it to "Back" and get aboard.

(William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.)

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