CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER.

BY K P PASWAN.

 Israel and Hamas are facing each other. Israel is telling the Hamas ‘’ End of Israel means the death of a civilization and the end of Hamas means death of terror’ ’. Survey finds  that an overwhelming  majority of Israeli Jews and  and a sizeable  majority of Palestinians (Hamas excluded) want their own states. Israel is already a sovereign country and will go to any extent to protect its sovereignty. But as one peace plan  after another  has foundered , the voice  calling  for the two peoples  to live as equal citizens  in one country is  slowly multiplying. Once Golda Mair declared that  there was no such thing as the Palestinian people,  In the light of her statements  there are several political figures who want a primer  on de-legitimizing Israel. But that is virtually impossible. The reasons are blunt. Most of the Islamic nations don’t like Palestinians, they  oppose Israel on the ground of religion

 We often hear that WW3 is knocking the door of human race. There are prophets of doom found in every corner of this planet who predict WW3. They predicted WW3 when the Ukraine crisis erupted, now they are predicting world war in the context of tension in Palestine where Israel is fighting the Soldiers of God.

We are witnessing a new global order and multi bio polar politics. Nearly one hundred years ago there were few industrialized countries and more than half of the world was being ruled by European countries. With the collapse of colonial powers, a large number of countries started taking measures for the development of their countries. There were two super powers engaged in what is known as Cold war. It was not a real war being fought with deadly weapons but it was a psychological war. USSR was known as the Iron curtain from which no information escaped.  There were only two Communists empires Soviet Unions and China, both of them desired to expand Communism by force.  It was USSR and certainly not China which was feared and hated by west but the world was hypnotized by Soviet Union ‘s success in exploring the outer space. It appeared that USSR was going to rule over the world. Its extraordinary success in specs exploration virtually eclipsed the failure of the Communist empire in other fronts namely agriculture and pharma. It also appeared that Cold war was not gong to end. But we cannot hide our failures forever. USSR was an Iron Curtain and not the Black hole from which nothing can escape.  Economic recession and failure to improve the agriculture with new technology  did not augur well for the Communist nation.

NO WORLD WAR. There is no point in discussing the collapse of Communism both in Soviet Union and China.  If we look over the Cold war era , we know we escaped devastation . At the time of Cuban crisis  we were really on a hair trigger, and it was only through the responsibility  and good sense of Kennedy and Khrushchev that we avoided catastrophe The nuclear power of the two Superpowers  had the explosive  equivalent of  one of the  U.S air force ‘s daisy  cutter bombs  for each inhabitant  of the US and Europe . Utter devastation would have resulted, had this all had gone off. The threat abated at the end of the Cold War, but looking a century ahead , we cannot  expect the present  political assignments to stay constant. Within the next hundred years , since nuclear  weapon cannot be  dis invented , there is quite expectation that there will be another stand off as fearsome as the Cold war era , perhaps involving more participants  than just two  and therefore more  unstable. Even if we consider the nuclear threat alone, than there is a severe chance , perhaps 50 percent  chance of some catastrophic setback to civilization. Parallels with Cold war is misleading. Modern Russia  no  longer  has an ideology to export. Communism is dead  and Putin has no intention to revive it.  Moscow glistens  with the bright lights of  of consumerism  and Russian companies  continue to  queue  up to list  their shares  on the London Stock Exchange

 These are extreme pessimism, and the survival of civilization depends upon optimism. There are many countries with nukes. A bankrupt Pakistan and a starving N Korea boast of nukes.  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of IRAN wants Nukes at any cost but for what and for whom? Iran is one of the richest countries of the world, it is an earthquake prone country and is surrounded by Sunnis majority Islamic states. The rulers of archly and conservative Saudi Arabia  in particular have long viewed Iran  as a dangerous rival.

 Egyptians have never forgiven  Iran’s revolutionary leaders for naming a  Tehran street  after one of the assassins of  peace making president Anwar Sadat.

 Iran is openly financing the Sunni dominated Hezbollah, brandishing a Kalashnikov , and speaking in his  fluent classic Arabic  in a Friday sermon  put the matter more bluntly.  Blasting the critics of Hizbullah as  Crilinging hirelings of  the great SATAN that is US he said that Iranian  funded Hizbullah had made the group so loved that  Muslims everywhere  felt , they have participated in it. This claim is not far-fetched. In far off Brunei, the Sultan issued order for  the obligatory performance of special prayer  for the victory of the Hamas. So all over the world certain groups of people support terror based organization. These people also raise slogan against US. The question is whether US alone is responsible for political tension in different parts of of the world? It is doubt full if without US, peace will prevail in the world. In the past century Soviet Union has disappeared and appeared  without  providing solutions to different problems, Putin may be our man of honors but he certainly  cannot be allowed to become the living manifestation of destiny ,target being the entire world, In the same manner China cannot expect to dictate the international politics simply because no country trusts China.  US never played the role of an international policeman. Certain autocrats in Africa and Central Asia have one political ambition and that is how to remain in power. No democracy can succeed in these countries.

With spread of modern system of communication, globalization is the only way to keep the world together but every country has to be very careful of greedy politicians , who want political power at all cost even if it means genocide or horrendous killing of  innocent citizens. War on local issues must not be allowed to cloud the entire planet. There must be check and balance  otherwise Globalization may become a potential weapon of  destruction.