The world economy seems in need of a world war that is 'well-crafted and geographically strategic' i.e. one that preserves the productive capacity of Asia (seems a waste to raze good factories) while destroying the consumption/demand centers such as N. America and Europe. Human need is easily replicable. If mindless consumption has in fact become the American Way, as it seems to have, what would Jefferson say of preserving 'the right to consume toasters and iPods'? The West inhabits a moral vacuum that nature will invade one way or another. Let it be a rapacious and well-conceived war.

A bout of good old fashioned destitution in the developed world would topple the Mazlow Hierarchy and bury the Rostow post-industrial pretensions once and for all. These were the self-actualization springboards that led the West into a narcissistic cul de sac. I'm thinking a collapse of first-world into third and third into first, rendering Martin Luther King's 'higher synthesis'.

The trouble is, the military industrial complex is on the wrong side of the conflict --unless China stops bankrolling it. Post-war, Asia can serve as the Marshall Planners. You need an untrammeled space (similar to post-World War II America) to serve as the launching point for renewed development.

Call it Pax Sino.