A new Army report offered a stark prediction of what will take place during the next 30 to 40 years in conflict.

While the report makes the predictable mention of terrorism, it is remarkable because it envisions an emerging “era of persistent warfare” over resources with competitors.

“We face a potential return to traditional security threats posed by emerging near-peers as we compete globally for depleting natural resources and overseas markets,” according to the report “2008 Army Modernization Strategy.”

This obvious reference to Russia and China will startle international diplomatic circles, Tom Clonan observed in the Irish Times, as it completely does away with the usual overtures to humanitarian concerns or democracy and freedom.

The report outlines how increasing wealth and power disparities, along with population growth — termed a “youth bulge” — in the developing world, will lead to resource competition because of a growing world population that will need increasing amounts of food, water and energy.

The author, Lt. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, also takes into account the dangers posed by climate change and natural disasters in future conflicts.

As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently warned of a “creeping militarization” of U.S. foreign policy abroad, the effects of this militarism may soon be coming home.

As the Army Times recently noted, a unit of the U.S. Army is now being trained and deployed for domestic purposes.

Having spent more than half of the last 60 months working in Iraq, the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) were scheduled to be deployed Oct. 1 as an “on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.”

In addition to potentially dealing with the devastating effects of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack, the 1st BCT may also be tasked with “civil unrest and crowd control,” using a “new modular package of nonlethal capabilities,” parts of which have been developed in use in Iraq, said Col. Roger Cloutier, the 1st BCT’s commander.

“It makes me feel good as an American to know that my country has dedicated a force to come in and help the people at home,” said Cloutier.

The Army Times notes that once the 1st BCT completes their mission, another will take its place and “the mission will be a permanent one.”

The Insurrection Act of 1807 and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, passed after the Civil War, prohibited the use of U.S. military units at home without very stringent requirements being met.

Those laws have been dramatically weakened with a key provision in Section 1076 of the 2007 John Warner National Defense Authorization Act, adding a new list of conditions that would “[make] it easier for a president to override local control of law enforcement and declare martial law,” according to the New York Times in a 2007 editorial entitled “Making Martial Law Easier.”

“The new law expands the list [of conditions] to include ‘natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition’—and such ‘condition’ is not defined or limited,” wrote James Bovard last year in American Conservative magazine.

The provision was slipped into the huge defense bill with little debate and no official mention back in 2007, although it had broad bipartisan support, including authors Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.).

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), along with every state governor, including Gov. Christine Gregoire who pledged to fight it with others last year, condemned the provision when it was passed. The language would give the president control of states’ National Guard units, normally under the control of governors, for use as a domestic law-enforcement entity.

Ultimately, the governors’ and dissenting senators’ efforts were pushed aside by White House officials and majorities in Congress.

Civil rights lawyer Glenn Greenwald noted on Salon.com that although the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act sought to limit some of the powers of provision 1076, the president issued a “signing statement” in January where he asserted the right to disregard the new provisions.

Greenwald wrote that while there is little cause for alarm of an imminent declaration of martial law with only one brigade deployed at home, the development nevertheless is a “dangerous precedent.”

Reach reporter Aditya Ganapathiraju at

news@dailyuw.com