I do not think that war is
inevitable, but the arguments below are at least sobering. US leadership is presently adrift
and often bone stupid. Yet that has been
true for much of history. That
leadership is theirs is a consequence of overwhelming real world fighting
power. What is today part of every
potential belligerent’s calculation is two things. The first is that the USA can bring overwhelming
power to bear. The second is that however
out of touch the current president is, his term ends in less than two years and
his replacement will be a response to your aggression should you decide to try
something.
I personally do not like the
posturing indulged by the odd Chinese leader, not because it should be taken
seriously but because it conditions thinking to even consider aggressive behavior
in a country that has zero need for it.
It is a case of allowing old fashioned military concerns to be listened
to. It is bad enough that the US
indulges this sector and lets them have their toys.
In the meantime, the dysfunctional
Islam political diaspora continues to behave like a sack of snakes. Yet that is the reason for their immense
economic weakness. The recent revolt is attempting to shed the feudal system of
autocrats, but is likely to end up with another form of Kemalism as the only
intact organizing force in the form of the military takes charge of their
respective countries.
Way more important than any of
this is that the clock is now ticking for the Global oil industry. Two things have happened. The most important is the Focardi- Rossi
Reactor which is able to produce heat at eight time unity. The second is the advent of a viable three
hundred mile range battery pack for the automobile industry. They are both coming into the market in some
manner or the other now. This means the
world will be converting to a pure electrical power system over the next decade
no matter how cheap oil happens to be.
Uranium and Coal will be dumped as fast as the reactors can be put in
place. Cheap power transmission will
then flood the market with power while electrical vehicles help absorb some of
that power.
In this way the kleptocrats will
suddenly be without foreign cash to pay for their security system. They will all have to walk and likely leave
chaos behind. The Arab Spring was merely
the beginning, and perhaps a premature beginning. The Arab world will look mostly like Pakistan without the support of USA cash. In the meantime, good governance in the rest
of the world is swiftly producing the rise of majority middle classes and the
related democratic systems.
The Arab world is facing a
massive economic and social transition that must be messy for many. What needs to be done is clear to a non Muslim
but anathema to the majority of Muslims.
It can be allowed to continue for a long time yet although we will face
a litany of aggressive behavior.
Yet we need to understand one
thing. The next thirty years will not be
a case of linear progress but in fact it will be exponential. The rest of the world will have joined the
resultant communion of modern humanity and political issues will have then been
well resolved as we have witnessed in the European Community.
In South
East Asia , Chinese faux belligerence will collapse with the first
real recession as did Japanese faux belligerence. North Korea is merely a rotten
apple waiting to fall. After that there
is nothing else.
Elsewhere, except along the fault
lines between Islam and the rest, the rest is getting its act together and
traveling the path of modern development which will now be swiftly accelerated
with cheap energy.
The Islamic world is about to
enter the fight for its economic survival with the baggage of an ideology that
is rejected elsewhere but interferes with their ability to modernize. Getting past this will inform the next two
decades.
The present tinderboxes are well
known and include Israel and
Pakistan
in particular. It also includes the
southern Sudan and
eventually parts of the Sahel . We also have conflict in the Caucasus and other potential embers needing only a
breathe or two.
In the long term, depending on Islamic
success or failure, we face a war of confrontation with Islam leading to the de
Islamification of Islam. If we are
lucky, it will be done by Muslims. In the short term, the problem is to defuse
hot spots as much as possible while hoping they can sort it all out.
The worst hot spot continues to
be Israel . We have presently entered a period of maximum
instability because new political structures are emerging in all the
surrounding countries. We simply do not
know how it will all shake out. The
potential exists for the renewal of hostilities leading to another Arab war. If such does occur, Israeli war aims will be
quite different beyond outright survival.
They will move to eject Palestinians from Southern Lebanon, the West
Bank and Gaza . This provides defensible a northern and
eastern border with the Palestinians reoccupying Jordan and establishing a proper
Palestinian state. This might be a Zionist
Dream, but the present conditions allow for it.
The Sinai itself will be also in
play if the Egyptian army tries again to attack Israel as is likely to occur if the
other parts of this scenario play out.
Of course, Israel has to
win such a war. Since they have been
preparing for it forever while their enemies have been largely imitating other
conflicts, their chances are at least good.
Once again war is in the air, but
to be fair, it has always been in the air and far more so in even the recent
past. So muddling along perhaps we can
avoid all that.
War Is in the Air
Posted by David Solway on Jun 28th, 2011
When one surveys the world situation, one cannot react with anything
but intense disquiet and apprehension. The premonition of imminent catastrophe
cannot be shunted aside as unthinkable or as the capricious imaginings of the
congenitally unstable. War is in the air, as it was in 1914 and 1939, before
the actual outbreak of hostilities. And the flashpoints are instantly
discernible, namely, the Middle East and the
South Asian theater. The sequel appears to be pretty much inevitable.
In a certain sense, assigning blame for the coming eruption is a
useless enterprise. Al-Qaeda and the Iranian Shi’ite regime are only acting in
character; they are the carnivores of the current political world and cannot be
expected to begin acting like herbivores. They have openly declared their
intentions many times over and have given every indication of being willing to
use nuclear weapons once they control or develop them. Those of us who downplay
the utter fanaticism of Twelver
Shi’a theology or the visceral savagery and determination of
al-Qaeda—both Iran
and al-Qaeda may be plausibly defined as “non-rational adversaries”—are living
in the flimsiest of bubbles. Russia
and China
have regularly collaborated with the potential “slayers of mankind” as it is in
their nature to do. The former is concerned with supply-profit, the latter with
energy demands, and both with the purpose of further weakening the United States .
Their lack of forethought is endemic and incurable. As for the feeble European
democracies, they cannot do other than posture and appease in the face of an
approaching firestorm. That is part of their genome.
But if responsibility for the gathering storm is to be
ascribed, it is to the United
States of America , in virtue of its
pre-eminent position on the global stage and of its failure, under the most
dangerous and politically corrupted president in its history, to address the
looming threat. For the U.S.
until recently was the only nation in the world that enjoyed the power, the
means, the legitimacy and the authority to avert the coming disaster, but has
now abdicated that responsibility. Indeed, its conduct in the international
arena has been entirely myopic and counter-productive.
Its Libyan intervention is a blatant misadventure, without a clear and
sustained strategy and in violation of
the War Powers Resolution and the Constitution. Its levying of sanctions
against Iran
is a mordant joke and has had no effect on deterring the mullahs in their quest
for nuclear weapons and the development of a long-range delivery system. Its
support of the misnamed Arab Spring has led to the credible prospect of an
anti-American and anti-Israeli Muslim Brotherhood regime assuming power in Egypt . Its
pressuring Israel
to make untenable concessions to the Palestinian Authority has only hardened
the latter’s negotiating position and rendered the “peace process” null and
void. The absence of a strong and effective Middle East policy has facilitated
the takeover of Lebanon by
Hezbollah, empowered Hamas in dominating a unity government with Fatah, and
permitted Turkey
to drift inexorably into the Islamic orbit. And just as the U.S. had little to
say about Iran’s crushing of its own people during the popular revolt of 2009,
so it remains essentially mute as Syria’s Bashar Assad slaughters his own
countrymen with complete impunity. After all, according to a recent statement
of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Bashar Assad is a “reformer.”
The comedy of terrors is literally mind-boggling.
The result of the American forfeiture of its political will, practical
intelligence and moral inheritance, as it grows increasingly to resemble the
political caricature that goes by the name of the European Union, is all too
predictable. It means that there are only two countries in the world left to
meet the Islamic nuclear menace: India, which will have to deal with Pakistan
in the event that al-Qaeda gains control of the country’s nuclear capability;
and Israel, which at tremendous cost to itself will have little choice but to
act against a nuclearizing Iran and its terrorist proxies.
There is no point in deluding ourselves any longer or smugly dismissing
apocalyptic scenarios as mere unbridled fear-mongering. War is going to break
out in the Middle East, possibly later this year and almost certainly in 2012,
and eventually in South Asia . There is a stark
likelihood that these may be WMD wars. For if Israel is targeted by Hezbollah’s
40,000-50,000 missiles, some of which are reported to be fitted with chemical
and biological payloads and which can reach every corner of the
country, it may need to reply in cataclysmic kind in order to survive.
Abandoned by its American ally and left to its own resources, it may quite
simply have no alternative, unless it agrees to commit national suicide. Despite
the promising development of the Arrow anti-ballistic missile program, neither
preemption—known in customary international law as “anticipatory
self-defense”—nor second-strike reprisal can be ruled out. And if the
U.S.-subsidized but unreliable Pakistani regime with its estimated 70-90
nuclear warheads goes rogue, with the finger of al-Qaeda on the
nuclear button, India too may have no option but to respond in the same manner.
These two potential war zones are heating up. The Japanese Sankei
Shimbunnewspaper reveals that North Korea
dispatched 160 nuclear experts to Iran
in May, and Fars
News Agency reports on Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardan’s recent
visit Tehran to
discuss “a vast range of issues.” We can readily imagine what some of these
topics will be. Between Iran
and Pakistan
falls the shadow.
True, the Korean peninsula is also a potential war zone, but despite
the North’s aggressive rheteoric and occasional acts of belligerence, it will
be restrained by China
for which a peninsular war on its borders is not in its interests. North Korea ’s mischief making is mainly confined
to the export of its nuclear technology and expertise to Iran and Syria . The Middle East and South Asia remain the epicenters of the approaching
upheavals.
There is a slight chance that we may emerge from the present
inflammable circumstances if we are providentially given two gifts: more time,
and a new, vigorous and wiser American administration. Otherwise, those of us
who are not immediately and physically implicated would have only one hope,
that the carnage stays localized. But there is no guarantee that this will be
the case. And we will then have deserved whatever calamity is inflicted upon us
for our blindness, self-deception, anemic leadership and languid inactivity in
the face of what might have been prevented.
The writing is on the wall and it does not take a Daniel to interpret
it.
No comments:
Post a Comment