One World, Many Peaces

Three Places Where World War Three May Start, And Soon

Where is a Third World War most likely to be sparked? For at least a decade before World War One began, those most concerned knew that the ongoing arms race was leading to disaster, as did those who sat on the sidelines and watched Germany and Japan build up to World War Two. World policy wonks have taken a long sigh of relief after the Cold War ended some twenty years ago yesterday, but in so doing have been all too lax at identifying-- and diffusing-- actual "hotspots" that are likely to trigger a global conflict on the scale of the World Wars, or bigger if you consider the nuclear capabilities of the countries involved. Here are three possibilities.

Between India, China and Pakistan in the Kashmir Region: Tensions between India and China have flared so high in recent weeks because of China's industrial expansion into the Kashmir region that states in the area have pledged to expand the ASEAN organization into a wider, EU-like bloc to stem it. In the past year alone, China's military expenditures have quintupled those of any other country (including the U.S.), and Pakistan's internal militant and terrorist troubles make it a ticking time bomb. All three, India, China and Pakistan, have nuclear arsenals at their disposal.

Between Israel and Iran: The recent fiasco over an Iranian ship allegedly carrying arms to anti-Israeli forces in Lebanon almost made me wet my pants, and if it didn't to you then you aren't fully aware what was and is at stake. Israel is a known nuclear power without admittance, and as we all know Iran wants to be, which could very well mean it is in the same boat as Israel but with a better public relations smokescreen. With Israel's continued expansionist policy, and the Arab League states all too quiet for all too long now, something is just not right. If Hillary Clinton and company can't do something now (and the signs already aren't good), the region's near-term future looks dim.

Between North and South Korea: Just today, a North Korean and a South Korean war ship on the western sea border exchanged fire, with the North Korean ship being badly damaged. Probably without coincidence, the exchange of fire coincides with President Obama's decisions to send a special envoy to North Korea to talk about it's nuclear arsenal. To stress the point, North Korea has been in serious internal trouble (from famine to a military-first economy) since the mid-1990s, really comparable in isolation and desolation only to post-World War One Germany. As we know, that led to the rise of the democratically elected Nazi regime, and World War Two.

Any armed conflict on a considerable scale in any of these hotspots is likely to draw in allies and enemies, as was the case in both previous World Wars. The global economic weakness still well underway regardless of overly optimistic reports to the contrary is the powder keg waiting to explode, as it was for WWII. My sincerest wish, as it should be for us all, is that the individuals and groups involved in each of these situations will realize that as a current event, the future of our world is in their hands. And, if they don't, someone should take their situation out of their hands. 

Asian States Initiate EU-Like Bloc for Peace, Prosperity (and to 'Lead World')

 

Asian states have united to officially oppose the Euro-American formula for global dominance emphasizing "peace and security" with one based on "peace and prosperity" instead, and which has a much better track record historically.  The two focal points of their meeting in Hua Hin, Thailand, was on reducing China-India tensions over a dispute about commercial projects in Kashmir and capitalizing on Asia's relative and growing economic strength worldwide compared to others, like the U.S. and U.K., who continue to struggle with the financial crisis and downturn. This meeting marks a watershed moment in world power politics and world history that should not be underestimated.

The most vocal member of this group of states was newly elected Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who has already shown clear signs of wanting to distance Japan from a half-century of U.S. dominance. The new bloc would build upon the existing 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with additional regional partners including China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand, Japanese officials have said. No mention was made of Pacific Rim organizations which include states like the U.S. and Canada. Pakistan was also conspicuously absent at the meeting and in mention. With the African Union, the European Union and other regional organizations in development, George Orwell's vision for 1984, a regionally fragmented world in which continents compete, may belatedly becoming true.

Another global, state-based movement also started with an effort to reduce tensions between China and India: the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which sought to offer the world a third option to the Cold War superpower approach.  But NAM sought less to 'lead the world' as this new bloc explicitly does than to offer an alternative, and it included many Middle Eastern, African and South American states. The negative example for this new Asian bloc would be the pseudo-alliance Japan formed during World War Two as a public relations tactic to further it's imperial aims: The Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. In any case, whatever form it takes, just the idea of a strong pan-Asian organization on EU-lines is a significant current event that cannot help but shape the future.

NATO is 'A Corpse Decomposing' Says General, Should it be Revived?

Halloween seems to be coming early to the largest and most powerful military alliance in existence anywhere today, if not ever. The former head of Canada's armed forces, a longtime member of NATO command whose soldiers are still at the front line in Afghanistan, characterizes the organization as "a corpse decomposing and somebody's going to have to perform a Frankenstein-like life-giving act by breathing some lifesaving air through those rotten lips into those putrescent lungs or the alliance will be done." This is also a clear indication of more fundamental and yet unaddressed issues about NATO.   

General Rick Hillier criticizes NATO in no uncertain terms in his new book A Soldier First: Bullets, Bureaucrats and the Politics of War, out next week. He goes on write that, with its ailing mission in Afghanistan, "NATO had started down a road that destroyed much of its credibility and in the end eroded support for the mission in every nation in the alliance. Sadly, years later, the situation remains unchanged." However, he does not seem to directly address  the fact that NATO came into existence to defend capitalist countries against communist ones during the Cold War, and those conditions no longer exist. Instead, NATO is "dominated by jealousies and small, vicious political battles" and a "lack of cohesion, clarity and professionalism," according to General Hillier.

Ironically, NATO (for North Atlantic Treaty Organization)-- an exclusively military alliance-- has carried out more peacekeeping than military missions since the end of the Cold War. NATO's arch nemesis, the Warsaw Pact Organization (WPO), was created by the Soviet Union soon after NATO as a counterbalance and was disbanded soon after the communist bloc collapse in 1989. Again ironically, NATO and the WPO never fought a direct conflict with each other, and their member forces actually served as peacekeepers together. Yet NATO has persisted as if the Cold War was still in effect, without ever formally redefining itself or its purpose, and with as or more mixed results. The question General Hillier raises is: Should NATO be revived?

The U.N. has no permanent peacekeeping or other forces with which to enforce its conventions and treaties. NATO is often criticized by scholars and activists alike for reporting to no one except itself, meaning the military heads of its 28 member states, who are often at odds in terms of troop commitments, funding, purposes and so on. I propose that NATO be put under U.N. command, though I cannot say I am the first to do so. Noting that U.N. conventions and treaties are binding only insofar as members want them to be because of sovereignty issues, transferring NATO to the U.N. would bolster our only world government in ways that current events require and the future merits.

The Return of U.S. Big Stick and Dollar Diplomacy with Olive Branch to Sudan

The "comprehensive strategy to confront the serious and urgent situation in Sudan" President Obama outlined yesterday was far from anything new in American diplomatic affairs, which is not to say ineffective. Actually, the shift in policy marks a sharp return to diplomatic tactics the U.S. perfected during its expansionist phase in the 19th and early 20th centuries: 'big stick' and 'dollar' diplomacy.  Here is how the two policies worked then and are intended to now.

Dollar diplomacy works like dangling a carrot on a stick in front of a donkey, providing a motivation to move in any direction the dangler sees fit. The U.S. did this with Caribbean and South American nations throughout the 19th century to great effect, and is generally associated with Theodore Roosevelt, who also won a Nobel Peace Prize. The Sudan plan outlined by Obama  will hold out "incentives" for Khartoum if it improves its record on human rights and the advancement of peace. Dollar diplomacy incentives generally include generous aid packages and industrial development. Sudanese President Ghazi Salahadin calls this a policy of "engagement not isolation," euphemisms about which he would do well to seek critical historical scrutiny.

Big stick diplomacy generally tends to be used after dollar diplomacy fails, and its effectiveness lies in a threat and/or its actualization: do what we tell you to, or we'll beat you with our bigger stick. The U.S. has done this numerous times, most recently in Iraq under the pretext of eliminating weapons of mass destruction that were never found. While Obama did not explicitly mention the big stick diplomatic tactic, it is implied in affirmation that "Our conscience and our interests in peace and security call upon the United States and the international community to act with a sense of urgency and purpose." These words are remarkably similar to those uttered by George W. Bush and his father before attacking Iraq.

The original U.S. big stick and dollar diplomacies were put into effect because American could not, at the time, dictate terms to other countries because the global empires of the British, French and Spanish were still too strong. In our stage of globalization, the same holds true for different reasons. This is why Alex de Waal, Sudan expert at the Social Science Research Council, rightly states that "It is not as if the US can dictate the terms, let alone bring along Russia, China, and the Arab world." As current events,  President Salahadin is right to think these diplomatic moves are "new" in terms of U.S.-Sudan relations, but they are far from it as historical forces that have shaped the future in which we live.

China-India Tensions Rise over Pakistan and Kashmir Commercial Projects

Tensions between the two most populous countries totaling about one third of world inhabitants were ratcheted up a notch this week, with no resolution in sight. Indian Prime Minister Singh strongly objected to China's new and ongoing commercial projects in Pakistan and the disputed territories it controls in Kashmir. Within a wider context from China's point of view, this is only one more step towards total domination of Central Asian natural resources and industry, highlighted by China's monopolies on most such resources in Afghanistan, to NATO's and the U.S.'s great dismay. 

While Pakistan is internally preoccupied in terms of security due to militants with Afghanistan in much the same plight, China is swooping in to capitalize, snatching up mines of precious and base metals, agricultural lands  as well as key heavy industries in the two countries. Meanwhile, the U.S., NATO and Pakistan itself seem strangely willing to take on the proverbial "dirty work," and content to hand off the rewards to China, which has yet to deploy rapidly growing military powers abroad, anywhere.  Needless to say the extent to which the U.S. military is strained and NATO cooperation halfhearted makes them vulnerable, and Chinese expansionism easy. Not even the U.S. military command could be so dumb as to instigate a war between them.

Kashmir is a contentiously disputed region between India, Pakistan and China in which armed conflict has flared several times between the countries since 1947. The U.N. has deployed several large peacekeeping forces to the region to little success other than maintaining a status quo detrimental to everyone involved, especially the Kashmiri people.  Yet, in the 1970s, India and China agreed to the peaceful principles of coexistence, which then set the stage for the Non-Aligned Movement, arguably the most peaceful global force during the Cold War. All this leads to a far-fetched but poignant question: Are Al-Quaeda and China working together, as their alignment of interests (other than religious) suggest?

If the U.N. Security Council had any prescience whatsoever, they would address the rising tensions between India and China head on without delay. The potentially dire consequences of not doing so have no historical precedent in human history because of the size and military capabilities of the two countries, both nuclear powers. But China is a permanent, veto-wielding member of the Security Council, so little is likely to be done if it were presented as an issue, as was the case with the Korean and Vietnam Wars. China-India tensions, almost inevitable as a current event, must be actively reduced to avoid a catastrophe beyond the proportions of the World Wars.