It might be useful to begin by listing the quagmires of the 20th and 21st Century since World War II that have sapped U.S. and western wealth to the point of the near bankruptcy of the whole western World now.
Here they are in order: The Korean War, The Viet Nam War, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War. And the potential or present quagmires of Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria and others that the western world now face as well. I don't think Egypt is a quagmire because I think the people of Egypt will likely bring about a better government and it also looks like Libya will too. But Somalia, Syria, Yemen remain as new quagmires the western world and Saudi Arabia and others might get bogged down in now and into the future.
The Korean War turned out okay for South Korea and completely horrific for North Korea which is great for South Korea and horrific for North Korea. Viet Nam as far as America and the Western World went at the time was a disaster from beginning to end. The vote tally is still out on what long term will happen in Iraq. But I would say at this point that Afghanistan is another disaster in the making ongoing. For the western world, this country is like a quicksand that we keep throwing money at. And to make things worse it is next to a nuclear power, Pakistan which is a traditional enemy of India another nuclear power. So, in danger ratings, Pakistan is now the single most dangerous nation on earth. And any political scientist will tell you this. So, Afghanistan and its effects on Pakistan very likely could spark some kind of nuclear war eventually. This is a given the way things are now in the world.
Afghanistan historically, doesn't seem to like any government, especially any foreign government there at all. They have thrown off ANY foreign regime since Alexander the Great. Strangely enough, Afghanistan in its independent nature is a lot like the old Wild West of the United States in some ways in its independent nature. The only thing most Afghanistan people seem to agree on is that most of them are Muslim. Otherwise, it breaks down tribally and into classes of people economically, like farmers, lawyers, and other trades. So, if I compare Afghanistan to the Wild West of Western United States in the 1800s I get a similar kind of wildness and level of education as those times here in the U.S. The people in Afghanistan are also at a similar level of toughness of necessity to survive. Though I have never been physically in Afghanistan I have experienced this same kind of toughness while traveling in the Himalayas in India and Nepal which is a very similar topographically and climate wise to Afghanistan. The biggest difference would be climate but in attitude in some ways it is very similar throughout the Himalayan region.
The other really important thing for the West to be thinking about is that Afghanistan and Chernobyl brought down the whole Soviet Union and this economically and ecologically devastated the Soviet Union and made possible a turn towards democracy because communism had completely devastated the country through nuclear weapons and all the semi permanent problems this brought to where people were gathering kerosene from the surface of streams to heat their houses in the late 1980s and early 1990s. And literally thousands of children and adults directly or indirectly died from ecological problems in Russia then just like thousands of people are dying in China from all the ecological problems there now also. So, there are some advantages to living in a democracy where people are actually listened to so they don't all have to die in multiple ecological disasters like Chernobyl and others.
But in the end, The U.S. and Europe may go bankrupt and fall simply because they are involved in such economically draining enterprises as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia. Because unless all the western countries learn to be more conservative with their military resources we all will be gone within 20 years as powerful countries on the world seen. And if Both Russia and China don't get their ecological act together thousands and thousands more people will die both places and the relatives of those people will cause further trouble to those countries too.
So, the main weakness of China and Russia appears to be in dealing with Ecological disasters and problems and the main weakness for Western powers is in regard to wasting their military resources and pretending it is still World War II and the 1950s still, which it isn't. One man with a Kalashnikov rifle doesn't equate with a million dollar or more cruise missile or multimillion dollar drone with hellfire missiles. Some kind of sanity and balance about all this has to be reached or both the U.S. and Europe will be no more.
Note: The best way to express this problem is that the 500 Billion dollars plus a year the U.S. spends on defense is as much as the defense departments of the next 100 nations in defense money outlay size combined.
No comments:
Post a Comment