Spengler Waxes Pessimistic

In a Tablet article about the disintegrating Middle East, the always insightful David P. Goldman (aka Spengler), writes the following amazing paragraphs:

Perpetual war has turned into a snowball that accumulates people and resources as it rolls downhill and strips the ground bare of sustenance. Those who are left shiver in tents in refugee camps, and their young men go off to the war. There is nothing new about this way of waging war; it was invented in the West during the Thirty Years War by the imperial general Albrecht von Wallenstein, and it caused the death of nearly half the population of Central Europe between 1618 and 1648.

The expectation that the waves of sectarian and tribal violence that have caused national borders to crumble across the Middle East will die down in 30 years may be both incredibly grim and wildly optimistic.

Spengler sees regional slaughter, disease, and starvation as an apocalyptic combination.