Written by: Craig Edwin Holdway
With the realization that President Musharraf of Pakistan will probably need to declare a state of emergency in the next few weeks to try to stem the overwhelming instability of his government, Condoleezza Rice (American Secretary of State) made an emergency call in a bid to try to prevent Musharraf from declaring the state of emergency. A declared state of emergency would in effect, infuriate those opposed to his government leading to its inevitable collapse and more importantly, would leave the Pakistani Nuclear Arsenal to fall into unknown hands.
The American government has this week publicly called for the replacement of the Iraqi Prime Minister as they view him as not being able to unite the different factions at play within the country. This announcement has now motivated the Prime Minister to warn that the Iraqi people are not obligated to follow the directions of another sovereign nation and they are capable of finding ‘friends’ in other countries.
In January, the American Government quietly added 30,00 more troops to their occupation of Iraq, and President Bush has now warned that American forces can not withdraw from Iraq as the same situation exists in Iraq as did during the final period in Vietnam before the American pullout. In Vietnam, the withdrawal of the American forces caused absolute chaos resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths as the different regional factions vied for power (killing fields).
The danger here is that Iran has been more and more influential in the region and will move to stabilize Iraqis to increase their regional standing as a power to contend with, only further destabilizing the whole region.
In 1981 Israeli strike aircraft bombed a Nuclear Generating station (Osirak) in Iraq a month before it was to be loaded with nuclear fuel by the Russians. This strike was an attempt to prevent Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons, and obviously, the same scenario could play itself out when Israel deems the Iranian Nuclear program to be too great a threat.
Any instability within Iran will send shock waves with extremely far-reaching implications. An example is that India, which has a large military capacity, has very close ties with Iran through its negotiations with Iran and Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom, to build an oil pipeline from Iran to India. India also looks to Iran to help stabilize Pakistan and any changes in this balance will affect India’s political clout in the region.
Another factor is the relationship Iran has with Lebanon, (against the Israeli Government), Iraq which looks to Iran to help mediate the current crisis, Pakistan where the American government has allegedly stated that Terrorists are trained, and Afghanistan where the West is fighting the Taliban, and France/ Russia which trade nuclear technical knowledge and expertise for natural resources and economic wealth.
Now the destabilizing factors are extending to regions outside the Middle East. Russia has declared that they will re-adopt a Cold War plan of flying their Nuclear Bombers on extended missions to meet allied aircraft over NATO Military Installations. Russia has also stated that it will re-aim its nuclear arsenal at Western Europe if the American Government does not give up its push to create a radar network throughout the Western and Eastern European region.
This ‘muscle flexing’ is being realized in the repeated violation of Georgian Airspace by Russian fighter aircraft over the last month in a bid to intimidate Georgia from pursuing further allegiances with NATO. Russian aircraft dropped a missile that failed to detonate on August 8th over Georgia. The UN has investigated and determined that Russian Aircraft violated Georgian airspace and dropped the missile.
The Russian diplomat to the UN has stated that Georgia faked the bombing in a bid to undermine Russian influence in the region and that they viewed it as a “deliberate provocation”. As a result, NATO and the American government are looking at sharing long-range radar information with Georgia in the future and thus bringing Georgia into Western Control more quickly. Russia will see this as a further escalation of tensions with the West, prompting them to further their military buildup in the face of new far-reaching Western influences.
The views are my own and are based on my own experiences and are written from personal insights and observations.