PEJ News - Prior to the Second World War, countries on either side of the looming conflict began mobilizing industry and the 'public mind' for what they knew was to be a grand war. They also began a frenzied diplomatic effort to form alliances. Today, a new alliance is forming to counter-balance the Anglo-American-NATO Axis powers that has drawn together traditional competitors China, and what's left of the Soviet Union; now they're wooing India to join the fold. -{ape}
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/
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C. L. Cook
June 4, 2005
The destruction of the former Yugoslavia was merely an opening move in the grand game currently unfolding in Central Asia. For the last decade, the United States, aided faithfully by its NATO partners, has quietly encircled Russia's southern border, knocking off former Soviet Republics, emplacing compliant regimes, and building military bases. The base network effectively restricts Russia's accustomed access to resources in the region, and impedes the natural export route between Russia and the two fastest growing economic powers on the planet, China and India. Seeing the threat posed to their future economies by a bellicose U.S., last February China and Russia signed a mutual protection pact. Now, India is trying to mobilize Asian oil producers in an effort to keep Asian oil in Asia.
For their part, the United States has denied their "Forward Operating Locations" surrounding Russia and obstructing pipeline routes to India and China are designed as permanent bases from which America and its allies will control Caspian Basin oil reserves. Their presence there is simply part of the "War on Terror." It's an argument that carries little water for the Chinese, who've grown restive at what they see as an encirclement of their country too.
Last week, China announced it's own plans to "deter terrorism." The first step they say is a move to establish a military presence (Forward Operating Location?) in the troubled former Soviet Republic of Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgyz government denies they will allow the Chinese to deploy in their country, but talks quietly continue.
In the Pacific too, the Chinese are watching the deployment of U.S. forces to forward bases in Guam and redeployments of U.S. troops currently in Japan. This, in conjunction with the re-emergence of militarism in Japan and it's recent announcement declaring China a possible "military threat" all contribute to a growing atmosphere of apprehension, punctuated by antagonistic episodes like Prime Minsister Koizumi's visit to a shrine for Japanese "heroes" of the former Empire and the whitewashing of atrocities committed by that empire across Asia prior to and during WWII.
History, to we inheritors, always seems obvious: "Why couldn't they see it coming?" Today, we are the living actors future generations will consider pityingly, when they too ask, "How could they not see the coming disaster?"
Mobilization, frantic alignments and alliances, and the propagandizing of the public mind, all unmistakable elements of a pattern leading inexorably to war; but this time it is different. With most of the current players nuclear capable, WWIII may leave no future generations to tut-tut our ignorance.
Chris Cook host the weekly public affairs program, Gorilla Radio, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. He also serves as a contributing editor to PEJ.org. You can check out the GR blog here.
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