While You Watch The War With North Korea Unfold...
Keep
An Eye On That Other Little Thing Festering In
The Background — The Start Of World War III.
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Where for centuries people have worked to keep the tenuous
relationship between the Sunnis and Shiites on an even keel,
in a few short months Bush’s people managed to turn them
against each other. Bush’s people’s leadership fragmented
Kurdish and Shiite political parties into rival factions,
creating paramilitary forces dependent on regional backers,
each intent on gaining control over Iraq’s resources and
power, and using it to their own advantage.
As we all know, America’s continued involvement has lately
helped to refocus the Iraqi people’s attention on defeating
the Islamic State, rather than each other… but what will
happen once the war with North Korea begins? Will America
stay the course and continue to help this battered friend,
or will our military be needed elsewhere? And if so, what of
Iran? Surely one does not expect it to sit idly by as
America once again packs its bags and leaves? Nature abhors
a vacuum. If America leaves Iraq, Iran will fill the
resulting vacuum faster than you can say ما برنده . (Iranian
Farsi: we win!)
Yemen
As though the hot spots listed above aren’t enough, there
are more places in the middle east that threaten to descend
into further chaos when America goes to war with North
Korea. Yemen is one of them.
While
small, this little country sits atop one of the world’s most
important navigable waterways: the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a
chokepoint between the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.
This simple waterway provides a strategic link between the
Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. Without it being
kept open by western interests [read: the U.S.], the world’s
flow of oil—and much else—will come to a halt.
Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran have led to a proxy
war being fought in Yemen. These days Iran seems to have the
upper hand, with short range missiles being smuggled into
Yemen, and then fired into Saudi Arabia. An already
miserably poor country, Yemen presents the world with not
just another humanitarian crisis to handle, but also a
situation where millions of Arab people are now on the brink
of both famine and all out war.
Air bombardments from Saudi Arabia, economic blockades,
rocket attacks, blockaded food shipments leading to
starvation, displaced masses, the problem gets worse each
month, and there appears no end in sight. Everywhere one
turns, one sees war crimes being committed… by both sides in
this proxy war.
With America more likely abandoning this hot spot too in
favor of its new duties in reducing North Korea to rubble,
one can only wonder how long it will be before a direct war
breaks out between Saudi Arabia and Iran. For the moment,
all one can hope for is for a stalemate to ensue, until
America can once again return to the region to try and
settle these two country’s differences. If that fails,
expect Russia to weigh in on Iran’s side… likely prompting
Saudi Arabia to strike Iran directly, rather than continue
to play around in Yemen.
South Soudan
The world’s hot spots are not contained to eastern Europe
and the middle east alone, Africa as a whole also begs for
attention… the kind of attention that will drift away when
America goes to war with North Korea.
As Jean-Marie Guéhenno, President and CEO of the
International Crisis Group says, “Overlapping conflicts
across the Greater Sahel and Lake Chad Basin have
contributed to massive human suffering, including the
uprooting of some 4.2 million people from their homes.
Jihadis, armed groups, and criminal networks jockey for
power across this impoverished region, where borders are
porous and governments have limited reach.”
And it continues...
Niger, Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivore have all suffered from
Islamic State attacks. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and
al-Mourabitoun too remain active, intent on attacking
civilian targets as well as national and international
forces. In this regard, Mali, a normally placid place, is
proving to be the U.N.’s most dangerous peacekeeping
mission, with 70 personnel having been killed by “malicious
acts” since 2013.
Will these places stabilize if America turns its back on
them as it goes to war with North Korea? Likely not. Instead
one can expect a further decline into a WWIII kind of chaos.
South Soudan provides an example of what one can expect.
Jean-Marie Guéhenno again states, “After three years of
civil war, the world’s youngest country is still bedeviled
by multiple conflicts. Grievances with the central
government and cycles of ethnic violence fuel fighting that
has internally displaced 1.8 million people and forced
around 1.2 million more to flee the country. There has been
mounting international concern over reports of mass
atrocities and the lack of progress toward implementing [a]
2015 peace agreement.”
Afghanistan
Then there’s Afghanistan. Will that war ever end? Will it
end if America goes to war against North Korea, or will it
fester and get worse?
For more than 15 years now, war in Afghanistan, and
especially political instability, has posed a serious threat
to international peace and security. The simple fact is that
the Taliban are again gaining ground. While the Haqqani
network is claiming responsibility for the attacks taking
place in the major cities of Afghanistan, the Islamic State
is coming to the fore again too. In their case, they are
claiming credit for the attacks taking place against Shiite
Muslim groups… in an effort to stoke sectarian violence,
which everyone knows is their calling card.
Despite America’s so far undying commitment to win this war,
the number of armed clashes last year reached the highest
level since the U.N. started recording incidents, in 2007.
If America reduces its footprint in Afghanistan as it
engages in North Korea, this will further weaken the Afghan
security forces, which in turn will risk leaving large
ungoverned areas of the country ripe for the entry of both
regional and transnational militant groups.
When one considers that America’s longest war barely
registered as a policy issue during the Trumpster’s election
campaign, one can only surmise that the President has no
clear intentions with regard to this nation and its numbing
war. If that is the case, what will happen when the guns
start going off in North Korea? Will the U.S. abandon this
mess to the devices of China, Russia and Pakistan, who have
formed a working group with the stated aim of creating a
“regional anti-terrorism structure” in the country, or will
it stay the course? Considering that Kabul has so far been
left out of the China–Russia–Pakistan trilateral
discussions, one can only wonder. Either way, here again the
world looks poised to muscle America out of the way, using
its preoccupation with North Korea as a reason to replace
America wherever possible. Afghanistan is a dangerously weak
state, without America’s continued involvement it is sure to
fail, only to be replaced with whatever it is that
China–Russia–Pakistan want to see in its place.
Myanmar
Not so long ago we held out hope for Myanmar. When Nobel
Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi took power, the world
rushed to her side to laud her, and her promised peace and
national reconciliation efforts. Unfortunately, none of her
efforts came to fruition.
As it is turning out, either she is proving to be a weak,
unskilled leader unable to control her own government, or
she is as racist and biased against the country’s minorities
as is her military. Either way, her country has today become
one of the world’s newest and most dangerous basket cases on
earth. If something isn’t done, millions of people will die
simply because of their ethnic makeup. Worse than all of
this, this kind of problem is exactly the kind of global
socio-geo-political problem made for a country like America to
step in and solve… and in the process help bring into the
modern world a people and culture able to contribute much to
it.
But
can America take on this responsibility, as it fights to put
North Korea in its place? Can it take on this role, with
China trying to elbow it out of the way, so that it can
control Myanmar’s destiny instead of the west? For China,
getting Myanmar on its side is critical, as it sits in its
own back yard. The last thing China wants to see is the U.S.
influencing the direction of countries like Vietnam, Laos,
Bangladesh, and Myanmar.
With little doubt, the world is watching Myanmar. The fate
of the Muslim Rohingya minority is drawing global attention.
The population has seen its rights progressively eroded in
recent years, especially following the anti-Muslim violence
that took place in the Rakhine state in 2012. Again, the
modusoperandi being used by the pursuers centers around the
use of extrajudicial executions, rapes and arson as the
means for driving the Rohingya out of the country and into
hiding. As of mid-December, the U.N. estimated that
around 27,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh. The situation
is serious, already more than a dozen fellow Nobel laureates
have written open letters to Aung San Suu Kyi, criticizing
her for her failure to speak out about the abuses being
caused by her military, and calling for full and equal
citizenship rights for the Rohingya.
This, without doubt, is a place where America can bring its
power to bear for the good of humanity, but will President
Trump do so? Or is the problem he faces in North Korea
sapping all of his energy, ability and military might?
And more…
Need we continue? Should we talk about how China will use
America’s involvement in North Korea as a reason to take
further control over the South China sea? How China will use
an American war with North Korea to mask its efforts to
further arm, secure and take final dominant control over the
Senkaku islands, not to mention to muscle Taiwan in even
closer under its wing… perhaps by blockading the island
state until it submits to reunification?
The unfortunate fact is, if America goes to war with North
Korea, while Uncle Sam is busy swatting at the Rocket Man
the world’s boogey men will be busy launching their own
nefarious games, in an effort to secure for their empires
the power they seek.
Given the long list of troubled climes we listed here, do we
think that war against North Korea is the way to go, in this
troubled world?
The unfortunate answer is yes. That is, if the goal is to
completely remove the threat of North Korean launched
nuclear weapons from hitting our shores, then the only way
to do that will be with force. There is no other way, save
perhaps for China and/or Russia to decapitate the Rocket
Man.
Unless something spectacular happens during the upcoming
South Korean Winter Olympics (which is yet to be held as we
write this article), look for war to break out between the
U.S. and North Korea sometime this late spring or early
summer. And when it does, as the U.S. refocuses its energy
on the Rocket Man, and leaves the rest of the world to its
own devices, watch that world descend into chaos. Watch as
WWIII—under the guise of hundreds of little hot spots each
exploding with a fury of their own—brings to the light of
day the bad guy rulers of the world, those who can’t wait to
take for themselves the spoils of what will then be an empty
field of global power politics, ripe for the raping.
Sources
The Russian Menace, Todd South, MilitaryTimes.com;
Flashpoints, September 13, 2017.
Jean-Marie Guéhenno, The Fog of Peace: A Memoir of
Peacekeeping in the 21st Century.
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