By Franklin Otorofani
“Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction.”—Pope Francis
The world has enjoyed relative peace since the end of the 2nd World War discounting for the moment regional conflicts and ethnic wars here and there, which pale into insignificance in comparison to the two previous world wars. Whole generations have been spared the trauma and misery of mega wars and only read about the devastations of the two world wars in history books much like fairy tales read by kids in peacetime unaffected by its horrors. This relative peace that the world has experienced since the end of the 2nd world war has been brought about not because mankind suddenly realized the horrors, pains and sufferings, and foolishness of wars and therefore renounced and foreswore wars, but largely because of the creation and imposition of balance of powers which had existed during the cold war between the Warsaw Pact and NATO, respectively lead by former USSR on the one hand, and the United States of America on the other hand, between East and West geo-political regions. The rest of the world, all developing nations savoring their independence from colonial rule and desirous not to take sides with either party committed themselves to a policy of neutrality and non-aligned in the Non-Aligned Movement founded by the legendary Yugoslavian leader and strongman, Marshal Josip Broz Tito, of which Nigeria was a founding and prominent member, amongst other nations. It was the “third way,” if you like. The Non-Aligned Movement which is now rendered redundant acted as a buffer between the two global adversaries and played a key role in preventing and resolving international conflicts by stepping in to tilt the scales one way or the other. Together with the UN Security Council and the veto powers of the five permanent members, world peace had been secured for close to seven decades now, and still counting, God willing. That’s an awfully long time.
However, the sudden collapse of the communist Warsaw bloc (named after the Polish capital), in the early 90s as a result of the disintegration of its chief patron, the Soviet Union, has created serious power imbalance in favor of the West at the expense of the East in all the indices of power configurations, abruptly resulting in a unipolar world. With collapsed economies and governments, German unification, and economically destitute populations in their millions flocking from the prostrate East to the wealthy, strong and victorious West in search of greener pastures, it was complete routing and humbling of the East bristling with virtually failed states. And to complete the humiliation, most of the former nation/states in the former Soviet bloc were quickly absorbed into NATO and later the behemoth EU that is now on the move to gobble up the whole of Europe, east and west. What this means, in practical terms, is that a major pillar of world peace has been taken down thus endangering the integrity of the global infrastructure of world peace. And the world is now witnessing the consequences of a breached and compromised infrastructure and foundation of world peace with military conflicts again rearing their ugly heads between major powers.
Truth be told, the world has never been at a more dangerous position since the end of the WWII as it is at the present moment. It had been peaceful because China and Russia had chosen to be quiet all along allowing the West to run the show while they were busy putting their houses in order. Now they’re no longer so quiet and are now forcefully staking their claims on the global arena. They want to run the show, too, or at least be part of it to the displeasure of the West that is used to running it all alone for decades on end and other powers acting as mere spectators sitting on the sidelines, wringing their hands. When, therefore, Republican politicians and commentators alike bemoan the fact that nobody fears the United States anymore because of President Obama’s weakness abroad, they pile all the blame on Obama, forgetting that the world has changed dramatically in terms of global power balance between the major players. When Russia invaded Georgia for example in 2007, there was nothing the United States could do to force Russia out as it did to Iraq when it invaded Kuwait because as the saying goes, there are different strokes for different folks. It’s a feeling of helplessness in the face of aggression just like it’s happening in Ukraine today. The morale of this is that when major powers decide to act in their own interests, there is pretty little the United States can do other than verbal condemnation, to prevent them from doing so, and vice versa.
The road to world peace passes through China and the Russian Federation (Eurasia) at the moment. Russia is the humbled, even humiliated successor to the defunct USSR Empire. It did not only lose its territories but lost its global influence and prestige and forced to go along with the West at the UN even against its wishes and best interests, at times betraying its traditional friends in the process. Remember how, for example, Russia was deceived by the West at the UN Security Council meeting to agree to a resolution on Libya, which was fraudulently but nicely dressed up as merely enforcing a so-called “No Fly Zone,” when, in fact, it was meant to assist the beaten and retreating Libyan rebels to defeat Muammar Qaddafi by conducting bombing campaigns from air and sea against Qaddafi forces and, as they say, the rest is now history? Yep, Russia had extracted a promise from the West that the UN Resolution authorizing a no-fly zone in Libya would not take sides with the combatants in the Libyan civil war only for West to renege and do the very opposite soon afterwards and started raining bombs from the air and sea on Libyan forces on the ground that were already on the verge of taking out the rebels in Benghazi, in the name of enforcing a no-fly zone. This is the kind of game the West plays. Well, the same West is paying a steep prize today in Libya today for its mischief and betrayal, including the US, whose Ambassador and three others were murdered, and its Embassy now shut down as those of other Western nations, and taken over by militants, because whatever goes around comes around. The West will never, ever learn its hard lessons in military adventures abroad.
What is more, even Russia went capitalist and democratic and quickly admitted in the G7, which is an association of developed nations of the West, including Japan, which was renamed G8 on account of Russia’s membership. Like China it gained admission into the Western dominated WTO and was instructed to be a good boy by the big boys who control it very much as existential conditionalities just to enable it exist defanged as a going entity for face extinction as demised power bloc in the history books as would a conqueror party on the vanquished party. Yes, it was payback time and West relished it with sadistic glee with Russia’s head bowed in obedience, even subservience. This was the state of affairs in East/West relations until President Vladimir Putin, the no-nonsense former KGB chief bristling with righteous indignation and patriotic fervor in the manner of former German dictator, Adolph Hitler, suddenly emerged on the scene to quickly engage the reverse gear in Russian foreign policy and reassert Russian sovereignty, power and influence as best he can under the prevailing circumstances.
This Putin managed to achieve in a delicate balancing act while still dealing with the West in some fashion, being careful not to rock the boat too violently while Russia was still weak and vulnerable in the acutely predatory environment it had found itself post second, democratic revolution led by a pathetic drunk named Boris Yeltsin, who became first Russian president after the revolution and a western lackey. Simply put, Putin was bidding his time throughout his first eight years in power all the while lamenting the loss of Russian influence in the world and territories, too, which the West dismissed as empty rants, well until now when it is too late because it was treating Russia as a virtual conquered state to be dictated to not listened to or argued with, but simply told what to do or else lose its precious sovereignty to the West. Former Russian President Michail Gorbachev, whose policies of Perestroika and Glasnost caused Russian decline and who treasonably presided over the disintegration and eventual dissolution of the soviet empire in 1991, for which he was rewarded by the West with a Nobel Peace Prize, as you would expect, and by the way, as was given to Obama just for opposing the Iraqi war, has since become a citizen of the West to complete the routing of Russia.
There is no question then these moves were strategically designed and executed by the West to wipe out all soviet, and therefore, Russian civilization and influences from the face of the earth. A humbled Russia gathering its broken pieces had no choice but to play along and get along more so as its relations with another communist giant, China, was not too rosy either, in fact, both were rivalries under the communist bloc. Needless to state that Russia has been kicked out as a result of the Ukraine crisis. And the humiliation continues. Today, the remaining few communist/socialist states, including Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, and China, just to mention but a few, have been orphaned with Russia itself shrunken in size and power into a mere shadow of its former self, and continues to be treated as a nobody with utmost disdain and barely tolerated by the West.
As we shall see presently, the seeds of a third world war have already been sowed by the West and the time of harvest is now upon us, if you care to read the handwritings on the wall as evidenced in the sequential, cumulative global developments akin to cumulative clouds that, on reaching saturation point, and unable to hold any longer, unload their contents upon mother earth in torrential, destructive storms. And I write these things not to pick on and slam the West as the bad guys because Russia would have done the same thing if not worse, if the shoe were on the other foot, but to underline the fact that the West, particularly Europe, that was devastated by the last two world wars, has not learnt its lessons and therefore proceeds blindly to create the very conditions for the next, because it does not know how to manage victory.
Western game over Ukraine with Russia is road to nowhere but self-destruction because Ukraine was a former Soviet Republic that broke away and therefore under Russian, not EU sphere of influence. Why then is the West burning its fingers over peanuts when it stands more to gain from Russia than Ukraine which is not a NATO member to begin with? It could only mean an attempt to encircle Russia in-spite of its earlier undertakings with Russia in a formal agreement to the contrary, much as the Arabs have encircled Israel, which in and of itself, is provocative enough to cause a third world war. Would any Western nation tolerate Russia sneaking up in its backyard like that? Have we forgotten so soon the Cuban missile crisis when the former USSR sneaked up missiles in US backyard in Cuba targeted at the US? If the US was prepared to go war with then USSR then over missiles in its backyard, why would the West expect any less from then Russian Federation its successor by snatching Ukraine into NATO and putting missiles right in there to target Russia? Its absolute provocation, if you ask me, and you don’t have to be a Russian to come to similar conclusions and object to Western games in Ukraine. It’s a matter of fair play, plain and simple. Or, are we being told that the world is governed by one set of rules for the West and another set of rules for the rest of the world? I don’t get. If this is not double standards, sorry, I don’t know what is, seriously. It must stop!
There is, therefore, a huge power vacuum in the world today, and because nature abhors a vacuum, the world now appears to be seeking to remove the imbalance in order to re-establish its natural equilibrium, which alone would guarantee it genuine long term peace and tranquility rather than the present peace of the graveyard, no better than the peace that once prevailed in colonized territories and slave plantations of yesteryears. Analogically speaking, it’s like water finding its level by sheer force of gravitational pull and will continue to flow in that direction until it finds that level and re-establish its equilibrium. Until that goal is reached, it will not stop flowing and it will sweep away or go around all that is on its path until that goal is attained. This is the force of nature that powers the arms race which will never go away in a predatory world but rather intensified spiced with ebbs and flows.
The means by which this quest for global power equilibrium is to be attained is primarily military with economic, scientific, and cultural components being at best secondary, because real peace can only be attained through balance of force and power not platitudes. That translates to war— yes, global war—the dreaded, long predicted third world war of which we are beginning to feel its outer bands as of a monstrous hurricane. As I have argued in a previous write up, every nation must pay close and critical attention to its defense, first and foremost, just a household would in a dangerous, security challenged neighborhood, because the world is not a “civilized” place, but a predatory environment and governed by the rule of the jungle. It’s simply commonsense, not rocket science, isn’t it?
Witness, for example, Western bombing of Libya into a failed state literally overnight; witness the invasion at will without reference to the UN, of smaller nations by bigger and more powerful nations; witness how President Vladimir Putin invaded and summarily annexed Crimea back in March 2014; witness America’s invasion of Iraq under President G.W. Bush under false pretext, and witness how even supposedly anti-war, pacifist President Obama had threatened to bomb Syria and overthrow its present leader, President Bashir Assad without UN imprimatur but was stopped by Putin, and has just found another pretext to do it in the name of fighting ISIS or ISIL, if you like, the new Islamic caliphate. That the world is and will remain a primitive and predatory environment till its demise is a fact of life and nations must reckon with that if they’re not to suffer attacks and humiliation from the big dogs. Defense and strong military is the only guarantee against predatory attacks, not food stamps or other social programs.
Third World War in the making? Yes, dear reader, its menacing shadows that had been lurking in the dark for a decade or more, are now assuming greater relief for the perceptive world to behold with great trepidation. But don’t be scared just yet because I’m not the famed French seer, Nostradamus, and even if were him in some prophetic sense, it would not be carved in stone or ossified in rock. However, if you would rather take it from a higher authority on spiritual matters than from a lowly authority like yours truly spewing some predictions about third world war, here is one from Pontiff himself, Pope Francis, warming about third world war: “Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction,” the Pope was reported to have said. With due respect to the Pontiff, third world war will not be fought piecemeal but in large scale invasions and clashes on several fronts by the big powers, and it has not formally begun. That said, his warning could not have been more timely and opportune even though confusing “crimes” and “massacres” with third world war has the potential of diminishing its imports. Other than that third world war is a foregone conclusion. It will happen and it’s only a matter of when, how, and why, not if, which this article seeks to address a little more deeply in order to understand the dynamics at play in the global arena.
POPE: WWIII UNDERWAY…
Before you run to the hills understand that there will be hiding place and we all be assured of mutual destruction as humans have stockpiled apocalyptic weaponry that can annihilate the entire world several times over. It is critically important therefore that only responsible states have access to these weapon systems and that raises the question as to who determines who is a responsible state player and who is not.
In a sense, the West has in its usual arrogance arrogated to itself the sole prerogative of making that determination to the exclusion of others hence its insistence, for example, on Iran dismantling its nuclear weapons programs. On its part, Iran has not helped matters, either by threatening Israel coupled with its generally bellicose postures against not just the West, particularly the United States, but even against Saudi Arabia and other gulf states. Is that enough to deny her access to nuclear weapons? Well no, but it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and, therefore, has an obligation under the Treaty to not develop nuclear weapons. In other words, it tied its own hands and has opted to have its hands remained tied by not quitting the Treaty because presumably that would validate and give credence to the allegation that it had militarized nuclear ambitions.
Interestingly, Iran, though a smaller player globally, is one of the countries seeking to remove the power imbalance in the world, acting alone or in concert with other nation/states of similar disposition on several fronts but most prominently in the defense fields. The attempts to remove this imbalance is evidenced, for example, in Russia’s and China’s attempts to develop military capabilities to counter US military superiority, since Russia lost its comparable superpower status, for example, with particular reference to the US Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) doctrine, which would enable the United States to strike any target on any part of the earth within one hour of its weapon launch. Russia is developing its counterpart measures just as it has done with its “Globalnaya navigatsionnaya sputnikovaya sistema” or Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) as answer to United States’ Global Positioning System (GPS), with China hot on its heels building similar systems, The Beidou system, launched in 2011, including its hypersonic bombers, for example.
“We already have a system of swift retaliation,” RT reported Yuri Baluyevsky, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, to have countered.
“Russia has missiles, such as the long-range, air-based X-101 strategic cruise missile, which is able to strike at distances of 5,000 kilometers (about 3,100 miles),” RT further reports the president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, Konstantin Sivkov, to have said, quoting RIA sources.
“It also has high-precision ballistic missiles that could strike ground targets, providing they had normal warheads. These are the two main elements of a rapid long-range strike, That is, it can be done now. Basically, existing long-range aviation would be sufficient,” he said. See (‘Deterrence not arms race’: Russia hints it may develop rival to US Prompt Global Strike).
Below is a recent assessment of China’s Strategic Forces, Military Capabilities and Intent by the United States based Heritage Foundation:
“The U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission has confirmed China’s continued investment in its military.[3] China’s official public defense budget for 2013 rose 10.7 percent over 2012. This, according to the commission, is “signaling the new leadership’s support for the [Chinese military’s] ongoing modernization efforts. China’s official annual defense budget now has increased for 22 consecutive years and more than doubled since 2006. The Institute of International Strategic Studies assesses China’s actual defense spending is 40 to 50 percent higher than the official figure.”
“The Department of Defense Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2013[4] has reported that a significant element of China’s military modernization program is dedicated to its ballistic missile fleet. Indeed, China has the largest and most active ballistic missile program in the world.”
“The Chinese are working on a diverse array of offensive missile capabilities, including submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The Pentagon report states that China currently has three operational nuclear-missile submarines (known as SSBNs) and that it could add five more to the fleet by the end of the next decade before it begins its next-generation SSBN. Each of these submarines is equipped with 12 missile launch tubes. The National Air and Space Intelligence Center has revealed that China will soon be patrolling with a new SLBM, which would “for the first time, allow Chinese SSBNs to target portions of the United States from operating areas located near the Chinese coast.”[5]”
“The Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fleet has also seen steady investment and improvement. Not only is China investing in new ICBMs; it is also ensuring that they are capable of carrying multiple independently targetable that in May 2013, China fired a missile into nearly geo-synchronous earth orbit, “marking the highest known suborbital launch since the U.S. Gravity Probe A in 1976 and China’s highest known reentry vehicles.
“The U.S.–China Commission report also indicates suborbital launch to date.” The commission report also notes that this was a test for an anti-satellite capability.[6]”
“In 2007, China successfully destroyed an aging orbiting satellite with an anti-satellite ballistic missile.[7] This capability is most dangerous to the United States, since the U.S. is the country with the greatest dependence on space. The most immediate result was that the collision created thousands of pieces of space debris in orbit, putting at risk U.S. and ally space satellites.”
Then factor in North Korea, India, Iran and Israel into the mix all of which in addition to China and Russia are ramping up their military and defense capabilities, some quite daringly and provocatively and you have the perfect combustible formula for setting the world ablaze and annihilate humankind once and for all from the face of the earth. There is no mistaking the signs and auguries, therefore, of an impending geo-political military clashes of titanic character of Biblical proportions dwarfing all previous clashes by sheer scale, ferocity and destruction, erupting in parts of the world simultaneously in the likelihood of multiple volcanic eruptions from pent up lava seething as it were underneath the surface of the earth. We can hear the rumblings all around us and feel the subterranean movements of forces aligning themselves on the global scene for the ultimate clash, including dress rehearsals known as military drills which are nothing but war games by the contending geopolitical forces spoiling for a military showdown.
There are sufficient reasons to be concerned about a breakout of third world war. And as before, it will creep up on us like a thief in the night and before we know it the world will be set on fire in a massive conflagration. And you ask, by whom and for what reasons? By the same old warriors, would be the answer, and the reason, as always, would be battle for global supremacy by major powers for which the UN, which is a tool of the West will be completely emasculated and rendered utterly irrelevant if it is not already so at this time because the more representative the UN and its institutions become the less it will become a tool of the West to pursue its global interests and therefore the more the West will distance itself from it. The issue is that somebody has to be in charge of global world order and the question is who? That is the bottom line and that question will be answered not in peace conferences but at the battlefield. It is not possible to maintain global peace and tranquility forever. Someday something will give ground, shattering the relative peace that has endured thus far. But don’t take that relative peace for granted because it is about to come to an end having completed its cycle, almost that is.
While there are as of yet no major military confrontation between major powers in the world today, who are busy putting out the localized flames and flare ups in different parts of the world, do not be fooled by this and be lulled into a false sense of security as this is the calm before the storm. The world must be concerned that the tenuous peace that was secured by Détente during the cold war, which has spilled over to the present post cold war era, as the so-called peace dividend, is about to end, if it has not already ended with the ongoing Western contention with the Russian Federation over Ukraine. But there is more to the impending global conflict than, if you like, the traditional East/West geopolitical rivalries, which have refused to go away even with the end of the cold war. Scanning the global security landscape from east to west, south to north one cannot but identify clearly three major forces the interplay of which will determine the direction of the impending military confrontation. These three major forces are Islam, first and foremost, the Russian Federation comes second, and thirdly, the People’s Republic of China in that order. While have different motivations, all three have one thing in common: historical grievances against the status quo, i.e., western hegemony, to be specific, and a deep sense of loss and therefore a sense of grave historical injustices which must be assuaged and rectified in some fashion.
ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISTS
For Islam, it’s the loss of the Islamic Ottoman Empire that extended to Eastern Europe coupled with the advance of western democracy, western cultural values considered filthy and immoral being forcefully imposed through the barrels of the guns in Moslem countries. Islamic puritans have been watching with deep sense of alarm the gradual erosion of their cultural and traditional values by the invading western culture and many have resorted to violence to beat back the tide and roll back the invasion. While their take scorched earth, take no prisoners tactics have elicited greater alarm in the rest of the world, their driving force is simple: get rid of western influences in Moslem nations. But that’s not all: just like the western imposing democracy in Muslim nations as the Christian crusaders of yore did under the papal orders, the Islamic fundamentalists themselves desire the extension and spread of Islam across the globe precisely in the manner of earlier Jihadist campaigns that spread Islam across the globe not just in the Middle East, its birth place but across much of Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe as well as represented by the Ottoman Empire, brought about largely by military conquest. The map below sourced from Wikipedia, in the public domain, shows the sheer size of the Ottoman Empire that lasted for five centuries 1299-1923.
At its height, it extended from the Horn of Africa all the way to the Balkans in Eastern Europe taking a large chunks of Byzantine Empire’s territories. That many countries in Eastern Europe including those in the former Soviet Union Republics are Moslems is thanks to the spread of Islam through military conquests in the Middle Age the type that ISIS has successfully waged so far in Syria and Iraq to create a brand new caliphate overnight from nowhere right out of the territories of more powerful nations who couldn’t fight and whose troops would rather take to flight abandoning their sophisticated weapons supplied by the United States rather than stand their ground and fight ISIS as one would expect of well-trained troops in battlefields. Is it any wonder that the Jihadists are now calling this time the “golden era of Islam”?
It’s the same missionary zeal that is animating the present day Jihadists with Islam on the move no thanks by Western meddlesomeness in the internal affairs of Muslim nations in the name of spreading democracy and human rights which is pretext and euphemism for spreading western civilization and undermining Islamic civilization. In this idealistic Jihadist campaigns so-called moderate Muslims are treated as apostates just as non-Muslims with no distinction made between the two. So when President Obama of the United States contends that Islam is a peaceful religion and that ISIS has killed more Muslims that Christians and other minorities in its campaigns in Syria and Iraq, he’s missing the point. ISIS, and Al-Qaeda’s stated objectives is to Islamize the world and purge the Muslim world of western Judeo-Christian influences. Contrary to Obama’s patronizing claims, both ISIS and Al-Qaeda are fighting an Islamic rather than any other cause and to deny that or spin it, betrays Obama’s unwillingness to confront the menace head on for which he has been roundly condemned. Yes, both ISIS and Al-Qaeda, including the Talibans and Boko Haram in Nigeria and other others are killing moderate Muslims alright, but that is precisely the point.
As stated above, those Muslims they’re killing are not considered pure Muslims but compromised Muslims who have drunk western cultural cool aid and therefore deserve to die as apostates just like non-Muslims and Christians or else forcefully converted to Islam to save their necks from the butcher’s knife. Therefore to hold that they the Islamic fundamentalist do not represent Islam is to play the fool or at best betrays secret sympathies for the murderous rampaging Jihadists that finds expression in puerile, apologetic denial of reality and common sense. If they do not represent Islam, what do they represent and for what are they waging war, Christianity or paganism or they just like to suck blood of their victims for no cause at all? Give me break, Mr. Obama. Quit burying your head in the sand and making nonsensical excuses for what is clear to the world as day and night. Talibans, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, and the rest of the Jihadists are fighting to restore Islamic purity to the Islamic world and beyond—the global caliphate promised by ISIS extending from the Middle East to Europe and the Americas and to do so the campaign must start from the home front as foretaste of what is to come to the other parts of the world.
In this new push by the Jihadists and caliphate builders, again as it was in the past episodes in history, a retreating West that has undermined its own Christian religion, in fact, actively persecuting Christians within its fold, has no answer and will be unable to push back as forcefully as required to effectively contain. Europe has been enfeebled culturally, economically and militarily from within by her own sons and daughters, yes, her governments and therefore not in a position to repel Islamic aggression from the Jihadists and will eventually be overrun by them. Some might scoff at the idea of a ragtag Jihadists overrunning Europe with its modern armies but history teaches us that large and sophisticated armies do not always deliver in the battlefields. Those who doubt the ability of the Jihadists to deliver should just stop and ask themselves this simple question: How was it that rag tag ISIS was able to capture such large territories from more powerful standing armies of Syria and Iraq, which are armed with sophisticated US weapons and trained by the Americans in warfare and in particular against this type of insurgency? How was rag tag General George Washington army able to defeat the British military superpower in the American war of independence? How was the Sunni militants able to expel the US from Iraq? And how are the rag tag Talibans able to expel both the US, NATO, and the former USSR with far superior weapons and troops, from Afghanistan? And how is ISIS now able to establish a brand new caliphate from large territories seized from Iraq and Syria under the very nose of the West?
There are other telling examples in history, but the point has been made that the presence of large and modern armies in Europe is no guarantee against the Islamic Jihadists on the move. The history of Islam shows time and again that it is capable of springing surprises against its enemies regardless of their power and military strengths and we’re now seeing history repeating itself. The ingredients of success do not necessarily comprise of large and powerful armies but sheer will and determination on the part of the crusading parties against a complacent, timid, indecisive parties the likes of which we’re witnessing today in the United States and across Europe, indeed the West as a whole. When ISIS boasts that it will plant the flag of Islam in the White House, it should not be taken as an empty bluff or empty boast. There are many in the US who believe that it has already done so through Obama who has been severally accused by so many people in the United States and elsewhere as secretly harboring Islamic sympathies. It takes the conversion of a leader to bring all his territories and population under Islamic sway. After all wasn’t this how the Roman Catholic Church and therefore Christianity took off in ancient Rome when a Roman Emperor was converted and decreed Christianity as the state religion? There is no question that sympathetic western leaders like Barack Obama and the rest of the pacifist bunch, will not effectively challenge the jihadists but on the contrary step aside while pretending otherwise. Already Europe and the United States have several jihadist sympathizers within their own borders, in fact, authorities in these parts have publicly admitted that hundreds of their own citizens have enlisted with ISIS and fighting for their causes. Alarming? It’s more than alarming. It means that these nations are sitting ducks ripe for the plucking.
The headlines below in the American media say it all about what many Americans think about their leader’s attitude towards the Islamic fundamentalist threat included here for further reading on this subject. Leaders like Obama cannot be trusted to lead the charge against Islamic fundamentalists whether in Nigeria, Middle East or anywhere else in the world because they’re Islamic sympathizers for crying out loud. In fact, several Muslims are in the US regard Obama as a Muslim not a Christian he purports and pretends to be. Here is a quote from Tom Delay, former Majority Leader in the US House of Representatives as reported by WND Politics:
“In defending America against radical Islamic terrorism, Barack Obama cannot be trusted,” DeLay said.
“Barack Obama was raised a Muslim, and he claims he is a Christian, and I can’t say for sure whether he’s a Christian or not, but he has shown over the last few years that he has great sympathies with Islam,” DeLay explained.
“You combine that with Obama’s political orientation that is far to the left,” he continued, “and you get a president who hates war, hates the military, and you have a formula for military inaction when it comes to combating radical Islamic terrorists like we are seeing in ISIS.”
DeLay’s indictment of Obama did not end there.
“You add to mix that Barack Obama is incompetent, way over his head as president, and the whole combination produces a worldview that makes Obama detached and reluctant to take the type of the military action against ISIS that would be effective,” he said (DELAY: Obama a Muslim sympathizer, hates military…).
Bachmann: Obama ‘willfully blind’ to Islamic terror
ISIS stepping-stone to Europe identified
Unless and until the present liberal leaderships in the West is changed for good, its decline and eventual conquest by the Jihadist is inevitable and foregone conclusion. In many ways, it has already happened when the US president, Obama, would publicly celebrate Islamic festivals in the White House as he apparently did in the last one while praising the religion to high heavens but deny same for Christian festivals while pretending to be Christian. Across the West, Islam is on the move the ground has been sufficiently whetted for Islam to be formally received as European religion of choice at the expense of Christianity. Gosh, have we not just been regaled by pro-Islamic Hamas protests upon protests across European capitals and American cities including New York, at the expense of Judaic Jews and, in fact, the persecuting of Jews in Europe again? And by the way, do we know how many jihadist sympathizers are enlisted and currently serving in Western armies in the United States and Europe in particular? No, we don’t, but we know what great damage a US Army Major Nidal Hassan with Islamic fundamentalist sympathies could do in Fort Hood Military Base when he gunned down his colleagues in cold blood while shouting Allah Akbar. And take this: he was reported to have been promoted to rank of a lieutenant colonel while in jail in a little military ceremony with protesters outside with one of the protesters saying the ceremony was “a slap in the face of all the victims” of Nidal’s massacre. Can you imagine that? This is happening under President Obama’s watch—a noted fundamentalist Islamic sympathizer who refused to officially designate the massacre an act of terror but simply as “work place violence.”
The irony of it all is that the strict, puritanical Jihadists are coming to the West not to support but to clean out the very same immoral, liberal Islamic sympathizers who are busy destroying the cultural foundations and traditions of the West. They’re coming to the West not to enforce so-called civil rights, gender equality, same sex marriage, western democracy, and all the immoral excretions in the West but to utterly destroy them and impose Islamic theocracy just like the Talibans did in Afghanistan and ISIL is doing today in Iraq and Syria its new caliphate. How much more dumb and clueless can western leaders be to think that by pandering to Moslems and cuddling Islam while destroying Christianity at the same time will somehow spare them the rage and wrath of the jihadists coming to towns and cities? It’s amazing how the liberal minds work, totally devoid from reality, nature, and commonsense in the fanciful name of “accommodation” and “cultural diversity.” Oh, what absolute morons! They’re digging their own graves for ISIL and Al-Qaeda!
CNN Poll: Majority of Americans Worried About ISIL
That said, the beheading of two American journalists by ISIS has elicited a palpable sense of revulsion and provocation in the United States to the extent that anti-war, pacifist Obama is being pressured to act against ISIS after facing a barrage of criticisms for being weak and indecisive from the Republicans and other Americans. By the time this article hits the press Obama will have announced major military operations against ISIS both In Syria and in Iraq. That is the nation’s mood today and expectation as now. Whether Obama will deliver or not remains to be seen. But he has no choice but act otherwise the Democrats will pay a steep price for betraying and letting the nation down after ISIS had so daringly and provocatively poked its finger in America’s eyes. A major military response that will provoke more militants to action is bound to occur whether Obama likes or not and he no longer has a choice in the matter as the nation is united on this military action against ISIS even by those who were not keen on the United States going back to Iraq, particularly war-weary Democrats and liberals.
But here is the catch: The West is quick at starting wars but slow to ending them decisively. And if I might add, the West lacks the staying power for protracted wars, and no sooner the body bags start arriving home than anti-war liberals in the West would take to the streets in protests against the war, demanding the return of the troops and making leaders who want to prosecute the wars to logical conclusion highly unpopular at home and liable to be roundly defeated in the next elections. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and others, proved this conclusively. The two men who want to go to war against ISIS in Iraq, President Obama, and his Secretary of State, John Kerry, led such protests against American war in Iraq, and John Kerry in particular is notorious for betraying his country in the past by leading anti-war protest against the US in the Vietnamese war.
Obama campaigned and won the Democratic Primaries on the basis of his opposition to the Iraqi war launched by President George G.W. Bush against Hillary Clinton who supported and voted for the war in Congress. That was her undoing with the anti-war Democratic base, which is Obama’s primary political base in the Democratic Party that has as usual voiced its opposition to US involvement with ISIS, beheading or no beheading of American journalists. In this, however, Obama has ironically the support of the Republican hawks, who want ISIS taken out militarily, and the sooner the better. For once, Obama finds himself uncomfortably in the same camp with Republican war hawks with whom he had disagreed and clashed in the past. Strange company, uh? You bet it is for Obama! It’s a great irony of history indeed for anti-war Obama to begin a new war in Iraq. Americans are literally begging and dragging Obama screaming and cursing all the way to the battle front against his will. He had said earlier that he had no plans to confront ISIS only to reverse himself when attacked by political opponents and ordinary Americans for allowing ISIS such a free rein as to humiliate America so provocatively without robust and decisive military response. Oh, what a cruel fate!
Obama to seek arms, training for Syrian opposition
As AP’s Jule Pace puts it: “For Obama, a sustained U.S. intervention in the Middle East is at odds with the vision he had for the region when he ran for president on a pledge to end the war in Iraq, where the role of American fighting forces drew to a close nearly three years ago. The timing of his announcement Wednesday night was all the more striking, with Obama’s address to the nation scheduled just hours before anniversary commemorations of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”
It’s an unavoidable fate given the realities on the ground because doing nothing is no longer an option, anti-war or not. His position as commander-in-chief imposes a duty on him to act to save American lives in danger abroad. Even so, he will be keeping a wary eye on the progress of the campaign and the quicker he gets the job done and pull out the better for him because otherwise his base will turn against him in no time. This is the catch 22 situation for western leaders when it comes to war decisions and potentially protracted military campaigns as this one promises to become with entrenched, well-funded, and well-armed, ISIL. No leader in democracy wants to be political casualty at home and therefore forced to buckle under home pressure thus ensuring defeat and hurried pullout of troops as witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent times.
This is the prospects starring the West in the eyes as it contemplates bombing ISIS and starting yet another war in Iraq and Syria. History is about to repeat itself, and given this scenario painted above, the West is not guaranteed victory over ISIS because while it might claim victory at the beginnings of the battles, history has shown time and again, that it lacks the necessary staying power to fight the war to the bitter end. The Talibans know this in Afghanistan, the Sunni militants knew this in Iraq, Hezbollah knows this in Lebanon, Hamas knows this in Palestine, and you bet, ISIS damn well knows this in Iraq and Syria. Witness, for example, how the West staged public demonstrations to protest Israeli military campaign against Hamas after enduring a barrage of rocket attacks for weeks on end. Again, not to be derogatory, this is the character of the West.
ISIS, a beast created and bred by the West to unseat President Bashir Assad of Syria, which like the Talibans created and bred by the West to drive out the Soviet troops from Afghanistan, very well knows that Western leaders are a bunch of sissies unlike their strong willed colonial ancestors, who cannot stay in war for the long haul and would sooner rather than later turn tail and cut and run. All they have to do is to hunker down when the West start dropping their bombs from the skies and wait it out. And when the bombs fall silent re-emerge from the bunkers to claim victory over a fleeing Western troops back to where they came from. This is the character of the West today, quick to start wars and quick to retreat as well. It’s led by weakling, pacifists and liberals, for the most part, who hate military confrontations for real, and when forced upon them do quick pinpricks over here and over there and flee. President Obama of the United States is an epitome of this softball modern Western leadership. But he is not alone. Hollande of France is another.
But here is what President G.W. Bush harassed by Obama and his liberal democrats to pull out of Iraq predicted in an address to the nation on the consequences of hurried pull out from Iraq, consequences which prophetically starring us in the face today, that Obama must deal with at great costs to the United States, the Iraqi and Syria people and the world all for his lack of vision. In a sense, Obama and his liberal sissies have brought this terrible situation in Iraq about by pulling US troops from Iraq precipitously with no plans at all to keep the peace bought by US blood and treasure. Here below is G.W. Bush issuing his warning:
“I know some in Washington would like us to start leaving Iraq now. To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we’re ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region and for the United States. It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al-Qaeda. It would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It would mean we’d allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan. It would mean we’d be increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous.”
President Bush issued this dire warning back on July 12, 2007, in a White House news conference in the face of liberal campaign to get the US out of Iraq in defeat which Bush refused to do until he had won the war, regardless of whether or not he should have gone to Iraq in the first place, which is neither here nor there in the circumstances once the US had put boots on the ground in Iraq. The propriety or otherwise of the war was no longer at issue at that point once the US had committed to war. The war had to be won or lost and liberals rooted for a loss in order to vilify Bush and tarnish his records for life—in other words, they played bare knuckle politics with the war in which their compatriots were sacrificing their lives abroad in defense of freedom regardless of its justification, after all Democrats, too, voted for it. Pray, have all these and more not come to pass in Iraq and Syria, the very things Bush warned against? Who is a more competent and visionary leader, Bush or Obama? The man who won the war or the one who lost the peace and now being forced to go war that had already been won, and then lost under him?
This is part of the tragedy of the Obama administration, which has no strategic vision whatsoever anywhere on the globe, and simply waiting for crisis to show up and fumble and wobble his way through like one treading his path in blindfold. To have Obama lead America to war is indeed scary because he’s incapable of fighting let alone winning. His heart and soul is on municipal social agenda of wealth redistribution and racial politics at home, not grand global vision. And as a municipal leader, his forays on the global scene have all end in disaster, leaving in its wake, one failed state after another in Egypt, Libya, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan and, of course, Syria, just to mention but a few. I don’t know about you, but whatever Obama will do in this new military action in Iraq and possibly Syria will be merely symbolic rather than full throttled military campaign because his heart is not in it, and if anything he will turn and divert the campaign against Syrian president Bashir Assad rather than ISIS, which is the creation of the West and the whole charade will run its course as the others. You see what I mean? The speech Obama delivered Wednesday night, on September 10, 2014, on his proposed military action is dripping with more vitriol for President Assad than for ISIS and jihadists. And just as speculated, he will not commit any American boots to the ground but would rather rely on others to do the heavy lifting on the grounds. In effect, America will only provide air power and intelligence in his so-called attack on ISIS.
As feared by several commentators before the speech who had gotten a wind of its contents or through sheer speculation in the media, the whole thing is mere glorified counterterrorism dressed up as war. It’s no war, and since it is not a war as both Obama and John Kerry have intimated there is no question of winning or losing, right? This is explains why the White House Press Secretary, Josh Earnest, could not define what would constitute victory for the United States in this Obama war when pressed by the media at a White House press briefing. This is the problem with Obama’s indecisive and incoherent rambling all over the map with no clear focus even in a supposedly war speech to the nation. Gosh, can’t the man stay on message for once even in a brief war speech and had to be all over the map—economy, Russia, jobs, Assad, et al?
In a war speech he lost track and started taking about creating some phony jobs after a month of disastrous job growth. Why bring in that into a war speech even if he was right, which he wasn’t but again misrepresenting facts indicating a belief that lies repeated often enough would take the character of truth. Again, he was in the same speech that ought to focus on ISIL and Islamic militants talking about Russia’s Putin and other distractions which ought not to be there in a war speech on ISIS. I’m not a military general but how do you win a war without fighting on the ground? There will be boots on the ground alright, but they will not be American boots—in other words, outsourcing the real ground war to other militants, Iraqi and Kurdish forces to do the work for him. This is a recipe for failure, if you ask me. Little wonder that retired US Generals are reportedly ripping Obama for his “pinpricks” on ISIL and accusing him of using the military for “political posturing” rather than going for “full blown military campaign.” You don’t have to be a general to know that Obama’s half-hearted air campaign in Iraq is only meant to satisfy critics not to fight ISIL. The man simply has no stomach for wars and will bail out even before he starts one to save his face.
It’s amazing that everything Obama touches abroad even at home, too, like Obamacare for example, turns into Libya, and a kiss of death. Do I have to remind anybody of this? No, I don’t. Why, is the evidence not clear enough for all to see? In which place has Obama’s foreign policy succeeded? Please tell me, just name one place in the whole world where US foreign policy under the Obama administration has witnessed a roaring success worthy of your mention. Name one single domestic policy initiated by Obama administration that has succeeded? You will search forever to find one. Why would Iraq be any different?
Will this prevent the West from fighting wars? Not at all, not when ISIS is poking its fingers in its eyes with impunity and disdain by beheading two American journalists so sadistically and barbarically, but it is something to keep in mind going forward as the campaign begins. Witness again how unpopular President G.W. Bush was because of his insistence of prosecuting the Iraqi war to its logical conclusion. He was viciously attacked by the left including then candidate Barack Obama to the extent that the Democratic leftist passed an impeachment resolution against Bush over the Iraqi war. The Republican Party lost the 2008 elections, not because of the financial crisis but because of the unpopularity of its president over the Iraqi war even though Bush was doggedly fighting to protect America and the West and gave it his all. It didn’t matter to the liberals and didn’t make him any popular either with Americans than his father who similarly launched Operation Desert Storm and drove out Saddam out of Kuwait but thereafter voted out.
I don’t mean to be derogatory, because in the last analysis no one wants war, but suffice it to state that this again is the character of the American people regarding wars and a bad omen for Obama as he considers launching another war in Iraq. It will not make him any more popular than it made G.W. Bush, but it must be done regardless. It would hardly be surprising, however, if the fate that befell the Republican Party in 2008 presidential elections befall the Democratic Party, too, in the 2016 presidential elections. This is my prediction, anyway, it could come even sooner in the November midterm elections around the corner. And it’s not just the US, Britain has indicated that it could join the military campaign against ISIS, and who knows, more Western nations could join the bandwagon. While the West is struggling to peel off ISIS from Islam as evidenced in Obama’s remarks ISIS is not Islam, the line between ISIS and other Muslims and Islam itself will be blurred when the West begins its military campaign against ISIS particularly when Syria, a Muslim nation, is added to the mix. It could easily remind Muslims of the Christian Crusades of bygone era ordered by Christian Pope against Muslims. This is the conundrum facing the West over ISIS.
We are, once again, seeing the early beginnings of, or at the every least, the creation of the conditions for Third World War, waged on this Eastern front, between Islamic Middle East and the Christian West, however much the West tries to avoid such characterization. Western attacks on ISIS and its caliphate will only draw Muslim sympathies to ISIS and therefore a veritable tool for its recruitment of fighters and jihadists against the West. The clouds are gathering and sectarian war between the West and the East is now unavoidable with ISIS and Al-Qaeda is its arrowheads leading the charge from the Islamic front in a bid to reclaim and expand its global caliphate as was in the days of the Ottoman Empire. History is, indeed, about to repeat itself, as a clash of civilization takes a frightening turn in the 21st century.
The world at war, but can the West count on Obama to lead the charge? More broadly cast, is declining and retreating Europe in a position to prosecute a protracted war with Islam soon after losing out in Afghanistan and cutting and running from the battlefields with the Tablibans? I have my doubts and that’s the danger because a half-hearted military action by the Obama administration that is notoriously averse to war, could result in a defeat for the West and that would be terrible indeed. And the fact that Obama has ruled out sending ground troops against ISIS guarantees a protracted battle with ISIS sealing Obama’s fate as an unpopular war time president. It’s been reported in the media Obama overruled his generals on sending ground troops to Iraq take on ISIS head on. Instead he preferred dropping bombs from the air, which as has been pointed out time and again backed by previous experiences, does not win wars on the ground.
President Obama Over-Ruled His Commanders on Ground Troops
Marine General James Martin was quoted to have said that “the decision not to send ground troops poses substantial risk to the mission.” In fact, it’s a recipe for failure and ensures that the mission will drag on for a long time. Weeks, months, and even years from now readers will remembers these words written here about the progress of the war against ISIS if and when it is launched by the West. Oops! Britain is not on board this time around, neither is Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, et al. Looks like the West is now beginning to take its hard lessons of the past to heart in abstaining from wars abroad but time will tell if this is the case or not. But who is with Obama on this then in his “coalition of the willing” (apology to G.W. Bush)? Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and few other Middle-Eastern countries? You’re kidding me? What a joke!
RUSSIA
For the Russian Federation, it’s the loss of the humungous Soviet Empire. The once sprawling Soviet Empire that once bestrode two continents of Europe and Asia collapsed in the early 90s causing the USSR, now Russia, to lose its superpower status, Largely under the radar Russia under President Vladimir Putin has been seething with rage while mourning the loss of former soviet republics many of whom have been gobbled up by NATO and the EU. Now contrary to earlier assurances given to Russia that NATO would not expand to Russian borders which assurance had been kept all these decades until now, both NATO and EU area now showing up right at the doorstep of Russia. This is both the immediate and remote causes of the crisis in Ukraine because NATO and EU want Ukraine as the prime prize to which Russia stridently objects to the extent of risking war with NATO and EU.
Ukraine in NATO would be ‘unprecedented challenge’: Russiahnhjolll
As Russian leaders have repeatedly voiced out, Ukraine membership of NATO and EU poses an existential threat to Russia and would therefore not be tolerated. A regional war which could easily escalate into a global military confrontation between world powers on both sides of the divide is therefore imminent as these nuclear powers tussle and clash over Ukraine. Developments in this region are moving rapidly with NATO conducting military drills in small former Soviet Republics of Estonia and Latvia now securely NATO members and Russia conducting even bigger military drills with China and India not to mention the huge war games going within its territory, all of which portends ills for global peace and tranquility.
However, although Russia is justified in trying to keep the wolves from getting too close for comfort, it is also the true that it has territorial ambitions of its own as witnessed by its acquisition of Crimean, admittedly its former territory just like Ukraine itself, back in March, through Russian engineered referendum. Putin himself has publicly voiced his regret of the loss of Russia’s former territories which he described as the biggest mistake of the last century. History is simply repeating itself because the world has watched this movie before under genocidal former German Chancellor Herr Hitler, the Fuhrer, those defeat and loss of territories in the First World War had created conditions for the Second World War as Germany moved to reconstitute the nation by forcibly redrawing boundaries. Here again, the conditions of a Third World War are being laid on the ground as you read this, which would be nothing short of doomsday given the presence of weapons of mass destruction stockpiled on both sides. Until Russia is done with reconstituting its former empire under Putin, like former Germany under Hitler, it will not be done. While the declining West might pull back at some point since it derives its heating gas from Russia, and Obama cannot be counted upon to go war, being essentially a pacifist and anti-war liberal, there are hawks in Washington D.C., who could push an unwilling horse to the stream and force him to drink water, and therein lies the danger starring the world in its face.
Putin to personally head top Russian weapons agency – report
Right now, neither side is blinking as both sides are willy-nilly assuming war footings especially Russia as EU relies on sanctions for now. However, that has changed as NATO has got in the game. NATO has just voted to create a “spearhead” made up of rapid response troops to confront Russia right at her borders in addition to the ever expanding regime of sanctions. It’s been reported that Russian troops are already deep in Ukraine causing the Ukraine side to suffer severe military reverses when it was thought that it was on the verge of victory and putting the separatist on the run. All of that changed dramatically literally overnight. The moment NATO and Russian troops exchange fire, that will be the beginning of a Third World War because there will be holding back and it will not be conventional war but nuclear, chemical and biological war all rolled into one for mutually assured destruction (MAD). The Russian Federation has been preparing for this scenario for over a decade now since Putin assumed the Russian presidency. We must not forget that just as Hitler was bristling with righteous indignation over Germany’s defeat and loss of territories in both First War and was secretly rearming Germany under the radar, so also is Putin, the only difference being that Putin is doing it openly being under no restriction unlike Germany, to develop its military except for its START treaty obligations which the United States has since accused Russia of violating.
Emerging from the cold after the fall of the USSR, Putin has been not-so-quietly rebuilding the Russian military literally from the ground up. He set up a Military Industrial Commission which headship he recently assumed himself recently tasked with complete modernization of all branches of the Russian military 70% of which is to be completed by the year 2020. Under this program complete new defense weapon systems are being rapidly developed, commissioned and deployed in service in a move to level up and overtake the United States. It’s a massive rearmament program embarked upon by the Russian Federation under the leadership of Putin and the numbers say it all. In 2003, Russian defense budget was a mere $15 billion, and today in 2014, it has skyrocketed to $60 billion, a whopping 400% increase in eleven years causing the US Defense Secretary to complain that both Russia and China are seeking to catch up militarily with the United States, which is exactly what they’re doing at a time the United States is downsizing its military and defense budget. While this is still a fraction of US defense budget overall which caters not just to the United States alone unlike the Russia’s but to European and Asian allies as well, Russia defense budget increase is clearly aimed at attaining military parity with the West or even superiority in the long term all of which, it would appear, is geared toward reconstituting the demised USSR as pre-eminent global super power and America’s equal.
While NATO and EU are saber rattling with Russia over Ukraine and busy imposing sanctions on Russia, Russia is clearly moving into war footing and has recently upped the ante by conducting practice bombing missions against the United States with Tu-95 Bear nuclear capable bombers armed with cruise missiles. What’s more, Russia is now indicating that it will revise its war doctrine to designate the US and NATO as enemies that it could attack with nuclear bombs at first strike. As reported in the ‘Drudge Report:
“Analysis of the flight indicated the aircraft were conducting practice runs to a pre-determined “launch box”—an optimum point for firing nuclear-armed cruise missiles at U.S. targets, said defense officials familiar with intelligence reports.”
“Disclosure of the nuclear bombing practice comes as a Russian general last week called for Moscow to change its doctrine to include preemptive nuclear strikes on the United States and NATO.”
“Gen. Yuri Yakubov, a senior Defense Ministry official, was quoted by the state-run Interfax news agency as saying that Russia’s 2010 military doctrine should be revised to identify the United States and the NATO alliance as enemies, and clearly outline the conditions for a preemptive nuclear strike against them.”
On their part, “the U.S. Army troops will lead an international military exercise inside western Ukraine later this month. The exercises, known as “Rapid Trident 2014,” will begin Sept. 15 and include troops from several NATO and NATO-partner states, including Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Canada, Georgia, Germany, Britain, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, and the United States.”
These heightened military exercises, surveillance and development of new and upgraded weapons systems by arch adversaries clearly portends war if not in the immediate but in the near future possibly within this very decade. As a matter of fact, Asian front of the impending and inevitable Third World War may have already started in Ukraine, which now the hub of NATO and EU military and surveillance activities against Russia. The bone of contention between Russia and the West is of course, Ukraine at the moment. But Ukraine is only a pretext for the expansionist dream of parties on the divide. For NATO and the EU gobbling up Ukraine will complete their eastward expansion to bring all of Europe under their umbrella and to the doorsteps of the Russian bear which could then be used to strangle it to death or least to defang it militarily and economically. And for Russia it’s about reconstituting its lost empire. This clash of ambitions is playing itself out in Ukraine, which is ground zero for both parties.
CHINA
For the People’s Republic of China (PRC) rounds up the threesome that will determine the character of the impending third world war, in fact, it’s the Asian front in the coming theaters of war. Why China? It’s because it’s still smarting from what Japan did to with its occupation forces that brutalized the Chinese during its invasion of China during which an estimated 300, 000 Chinese were murdered by the Japanese Imperial troops in 1937. The extreme brutality of the Japanese on the Chinese POWs, women and elders, was unprecedented in world history and will never be forgotten by China, which is more less seeking revenge of sorts, not saying that so much in words as in actions. That lingering bitterness is accentuated by Japan’s refusal to apologize for its war crimes against China continue to fuel Chinese military build-up and aggression against Japan and other neighboring Asian states such as the Philippines, India, and now Taiwan, which is historically part of China, just like Hong Kong.
There is no question that Chinese aggressive military build-up is aimed at dominating the Asian continent, and wants Japan out of the way. The only thing preventing it for now from invading either Japan or Taiwan is the United States, which guarantees the protection of those countries against China. Now China is regarding the United States as an irritant that must be dealt with at some point when it feels able and capable of challenging it militarily. That time has come and we’re witnessing increasing Chinese military confrontation with the United States including but not limited to the recent declaration of the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the East China Sea which covers disputed Senkaku Islands with Japan and the shadowing of American surveillance planes in international air space.
China is reported to be pursuing defense policy that is geared toward neutralizing American military power and therefore protection of her allies in the region, and this defense posture includes, but not limited to the militarization of space which China is now committee to. This is not going down well with the United States which believes and pursues a policy of freedom in space for unfettered deployment of satellites for both military and commercial use. However, there is pretty little the United States can do to stop China except developing similar systems to protect her assets in space and those of her allies. It’s too much burden on one nation to protect virtually the whole world: Asia and Europe, Africa, Middle East and others. America is not God and in the end everyone would have to fend for themselves. It’s just too much to bear and many of her allies are already reconciling themselves to this reality. Therefore, sensing that the US might not be able to fully protect it from Chinese attack, Japan has thrown out its pacifist posture by amending its pacifist constitution to the further annoyance of China. We know where this is going, don’t we? A dangerous end indeed. A state of cold war now exists between China and Japan with both Vietnam and Philippines thrown into the mix, which has all the potentials of degenerating into full blown civil war not unlike the situation in Eastern Europe where the warring parties are already engaged militarily.
Conclusions
The Arab front in this analysis is pegged to fundamentalist Islamists but that is discounting the Iranian threats linked to Hezbollah and Hamas. As we have witnessed of recent, Iran is a rising Islamic power, and for now the most powerful nation in the region and therefore deserves to be accounted for in this exercise. Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons is a fait accompli because the West does not have the will power to stop it. However, much as it is rapidly developing advanced military systems to counter the West, Iran is not in a position yet to launch a global war, it is bidding its time and it won’t be long before it gets there and takes on the West. This is the third front. That said, the Asian theater is as much as dangerous as the Russian front if not more so. And coupled with the Iranian front, and with North Korea rattling the sabers, all is set, Ladies and Gentlemen for the major global military conflicts erupting geo-politically in different parts of the world—the impending Third World War theaters—all arrayed against the West because, as we have seen in the preceding chapters, the West is the common adversary to all of the other major geo-political players. In other words, it’s NATO versus potentially a coalition of sorts amongst China, Russia, Iran, Islamic fundamentalists, and North Korea or some other configuration as the conflicts shape up in the coming weeks, months and even years. But it’s coming—make no mistake about it. Even the Pope in the Vatican has seen it coming. It’s all set folks, and there is no escaping it!
Franklin Otorofani, a prolific writer, whose articles have appeared in several publications around the world, is a Nigerian-trained attorney and public affairs analyst based in the United States.
Contact: mudiagaone@yahoo.com
OGAC 