How to start a world war
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
We are approaching a pivotal moment in history. The local war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is one front in a regional war between Israel and Iran. The regional war between Israel and Iran is a proxy for America's rivalry with Russia and China. So is the European proxy for that rivalry, the war in Ukraine. Add to that the endless standoff with another Chinese ally, North Korea, and the multiplying brush fires across the Sudanic belt of Africa, where Russia is fanning the flames. This is how a world war begins.
By the time you know a world war has begun, it's too late. The powder trail to the war of 1914 was lit in 1906, with the first of several small wars in the Balkans as local nationalisms unpicked the borderlands of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. The war of 1939, which was the war of 1941 for Americans, was the war of 1931 for the Chinese, and the war of 1933 for the Jews. The Japanese began their Asian rampage by invading Manchuria a full decade before.
What time is it? Eight years passed between 1906 and 1914 and between 1931 and 1939. Eight years passed between the Iran deal of 2015 and the Iranian-sponsored war of 2023. History really does rhyme. Perhaps Barack Obama, the most professorial president since Woodrow Wilson, would like to share his thoughts with the class. But the beloved verbalist is strangely quiet these days.
When historians try to understand how local conflicts became global ones in 1914 and 1939, they look at those eight-year preludes. They see failure to control expansionist powers in time, and even appeasement as a decaying ruling class realizes too late what is happening. They see the hollowing of alliances, and how one era's security guarantee becomes another era's invitation to war. They see willed delusion, as when Britain's leaders told themselves the war would be over by Christmas, or that Mr. Hitler was a reasonable chap even if he was beastly to the Jews. Complacency is behind all of these errors, and arrogance behind complacency.
They also see deeper causes. The Germans signaled their intent to dominate Europe 44 years before the war of 1914 by attacking France and declaring themselves an empire. It is now 44 years since the Iranian Revolution announced the rise of a new Persian empire in clerical guise. Another rhyme, though not quite a repetition. The German imperialism of 1914 was brutally militarist, but it was not eliminationist like that of 1939. The ideology of the mullahs who control Iran has been explicitly eliminationist toward the Jewish people for decades. This did not stop the Obama administration from, as Henry Kissinger put it, setting Iran on a "glide path" to nuclear weapons.
When the Obama team raised Iran to regional power, it hollowed its long-standing alliances with its regional clients, Israel and the Sunni Arab autocracies. The Biden administration doubled down. The result is the double humiliation of American diplomacy we saw in recent days. When Secretary of State Antony Blinken toured the capitals of America's alleged Arab allies like a cut-price Kissinger, he got the brush-off from them all.
Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia is said to have kept Blinken waiting for eight hours. At least Blinken's humiliation by MbS was private. In a press conference at Doha, the foreign minister of Qatar, which funds Hamas and hosts its leadership, refused to close down Hamas's office while Blinken squirmed at his lectern. In Egypt, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi publicly degraded Blinken. "You said that you are a Jewish person," El-Sisi said before the cameras, then denied Egypt's modern history of persecuting its Jews. Blinken failed to correct him. His attempt to "As a Jew…" El-Sisi shows how deep the delusions of identity politics run in America's institutions.
Would the crisis of 1914 have been eased if the leaders of Britain and France had rushed to Sarajevo for a photo op? Or would it have assisted a gang of Serbian psychopaths in their effort to monopolize the world's attention? President Joe Biden has already sent out the fleet. His visit to Israel was a stunt for the domestic vote in 2024. His attempt to get the Arabs onside after their rebuff of Blinken never got started. The leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority took the destruction of a Gazan hospital, most probably by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, as a pretext to refuse to meet him. As insults go, they might as well have thrown their sandals at Air Force One.
Niall Ferguson, in a grimly perspicacious article in the Sunday Times of London, sees the battle lines of a world war as the Heartland coheres against the Rimland: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea against the United States and its allies. As in the 1930s, the event horizon is narrowing toward catastrophe. The bungled Afghanistan withdrawal of 2021. The needlessly extended Ukraine war of 2022. The surprise Middle Eastern war of 2023 that everyone expected for years. Taiwan 2024?
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Xi is not as stupid as Vlad and Ali.
Right. So why wouldn't he take advantage?...
You know, we weren't talking about this crap three years ago. Why has the world gone to shit after Joe Biden became President?
Because we weren't perceived to be as weak and rudderless as we currently are.
Because world 'troublemakers' understand that in four years or eight at the most every leader in the U.S. will be tossed out or termed out-while despots, tyrants, emperors/kings/queens, and so-called, Presidents-for-life" can pause their talks/antics/tactics/strategies until the NEXT U.S. guy (or gal) leader shows up. Then, these types of leaders execute at a new time of their choosing.
Moreover, for the record, there is not a damn thing weak about stationing two carrier battle groups off the coastal waters of Israel, Palestine, and parts South and North. They are not show 'pieces' these vessels mean business when the order is given to defend themselves and others from DOD.
So, global instability is because of term limits on the executive branch?......
Kind of amazing then that so many of the despots, tyrants, emperors/kings/queens, and so-called, Presidents-for-life" somehow decided to wait until Joe Biden was in office.
Coincidence?
Hardly!!!
Of course not! Global problems are caused by interactions between the 'players' involved. Of course, our role, as it is, in international politics, plural, is based on our insertion into other nations politics and policies base on signed agreements, contracts, and "protection" clauses which are under the authority vested in the of the U.S. President.
For rulers and the like of world nations, they have an option to deal with the U.S. government in real time or stall for a better time of their own choosing. It is not as if their nationals will be so offended by delay/s that they will make a significant uprising—in many situations at the point of death/loss of individual and collective lives.
Somebody needs to get a life. Situational world politics is disturbed by the same or similar nuisance politics and flare-ups every few years. And, the usual suspects like to stave their claim to being the solution to this or that set of problems. . . but they could not keep a leadership position, because they truly are not problem-solvers but in fact are world-class antagonists.
So it's all the "same as it ever was"? A war in NATOs backyard, a war with our only real ally in the ME, the tensions in the Pacific?... Seems like a rather myopic way of viewing world events.
I'll give you myopic: Trying to constrain/connect/tie world dynamics to a lens of U.S. MAGA conservative politics. The world does not contain its interests or even its self-interests to what a small minority of U.S. propagandists think-tanks and news reporting view as acceptable politics. The world can't afford such luxury. These nations have serious/grave problems that are 'historic' in the sense of reaching back into the depths of their national existences in time and space. That is, their locations.
Ah, so you think their proximity to each other is the main cause of conflict?....
In the case (past and present): North Vietnam/South Vietnam; North Korea/South Korea; Pakistan/India; Russia/Ukraine; Gaza/Israel - clearly some countries have complex and/or irreconcilable differences and but for being stuck in place - would move on and away from each other! Of course, likes and dislikes politically is the main cause of their conflicts, it bears accepting without much repeating.
Will you let us know when Biden moves from protagonist to problem solver?
The world is waiting!