Do population bombs beat conventional bombs?

Here's an interesting (and probably controversial) article on AlterNet: "How Birthrate Is Turning Modern Conventional Warfare on Its Head."

The basic thesis appears to be that variations in fecundity (fertility rates) can be more powerful than weaponry and warfare in determining the direction of a nation. Herewith some excerpts:

All through the nineteenth century, the European powers, led by the British and French, took the land they wanted on the grounds that they had better military technology, transport and organization. Locals who disputed that notion tended to disappear as casualties of inevitable progress…

Now, even though the balance in conventional warfare is if anything tilting further toward the first world, the technologically advanced and organized countries are in retreat, and the former victims are pushing back, not just claiming their old territories but infiltrating the former colonizers’ countries…

So there’s a shocking lesson that military buffs have been slow to face: military superiority doesn’t matter nearly as much right now as birthrate and sheer ruthless will…

In some places, it’s open policy. For example, in Palestine there’s an all-out birthrate war going on between the Palestinians and the Israelis… The Gaza Strip, for instance, has one of the highest fertility rates in the world outside Africa, at 5.6 kids per woman… But the most amazing rates anywhere, even higher than for the Gaza Palestinians, are in the most extreme Zionist groups, the Haredi “ultra-orthodox” Jews. Until recently they averaged eight or nine children per woman. That’s actually higher than the rate for Mali (7.38 per woman), which has the highest birthrate in the world…

If you want an example closer to home, just go to Northern Ireland where the Protestant majority the border was designed to maintain has been getting smaller and smaller, thanks to the higher birthrate among Catholics. As of 2001, the Catholics were about 46% of the population, up from 35% in 1961.

But as the dreaded “Catholic Majority” date approaches, a funny thing is happening up in Ulster: the Catholic birth rate is slowing down even faster than the Protestant rate. This always happens when a tribe breaks out of its slums into the middle class. This illustrates one of the real brain-twisters of contemporary demographic struggle: if you really hate the enemy tribe, the best thing you could do would be to make them rich. Rich people don’t have nearly as many kids...

The author then goes on to discuss the obvious example of the Latinos in the southwestern United States and finally the question as to whether it matters or not - whether the immigrants get absorbed into the culture so the culture doesn't change significantly. I won't append any editorial comments here - just offering the link for those who are interested in such matters. The discussion at Reddit hits the important talking points, biases, and controversies raised by the article.

And this serves as a good introduction to the blog entry below this one, on worldwide population trends.