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FUTURE WARS



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Will there be a Third World War?

The Week magazine,  December 31, 2000 (New Delhi)
December 29, 2000

By Humphrey Hawksley/ London

The primary battlefields of tomorrow will be the poorer regions and
countries of Asia. Indochina, Central Asia, Tibet and Kashmir are all
vulnerable spots. Local conflicts in these places have the potential to
develop into a wild-cat global fire.

THE SUDDEN rapprochement between the United States and North Korea has
thrown a new spotlight on the jigsaw puzzle of world conflicts. The
Korean peninsula, recently declared the most dangerous place on earth,
has now be come a model of sunshine diplomacy.

It is now probable that the two Koreas have embarked upon a slow and
difficult path towards reconciliation and eventual reunification. There
will be threats and tempers, but the spectre of the ceasefire village of
Panmunjon being used as the flashpoint for the Third World War is
rapidly diminishing. It is a fitting moment, therefore, to examine the
dozens of conflicts around the world and ask where they might be leading
and how should they be dealt with.

Broadly speaking, the conflicts fall into three categories. There are
those breaking out from the dying embers of bygone regimes. North Korea,
East Timor and Kosovo/ Serbia fit into this category. The demise of
Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is likely to become another example.

There are those which are highly localized and, although violent and
dreadful for innocents caught up in them, do not threaten the wider
balance of world peace. The Sierra Leone diamond war is an example.

And there are those which draw wide support from elsewhere in the world.
The Palestinian uprising against Israel and the insurgency in Kashmir
are examples of these.

On a lesser scale, the Sino-Japanese dispute over the uninhabited
Senkaku or Taioyu-tai islands in the East China Sea has in recent years
incited feelings of Chinese and Japanese nationalism far beyond the
worth of the territory being claimed, as have the long-running disputes
over the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.

The first two categories of conflict have emerged over the past decade
largely because of the end of the Cold War. Before that havoc regional,
tribal and nationalistic antagonisms were largely suppressed within the
camps of the two superpowers.

The Yugoslav conflict flared up as soon as the Soviet/Eastern Bloc
umbrella was lifted from it. President Milosovic himself was a creation
of the Soviets. He took a long time to destruct, but now he has gone,
Europe is on the mend, and no more Milosovics are waiting in the wings
of power.

Presidents Marcos, Suharto, Ershad and others were creations of America
who were dragged from the stage when their time was up. Saddam Hussein
of Iraq was a quasi-American product which went wrong.

In these first two categories, anyone living in the conflict zone will
suffer, either as a result of war and bloodshed, or as a result of
sanctions, as in the case of Iraq and Serbia.

For those of us living outside, life goes on as normal. They are
contained problems which do not directly affect our jobs, our homes, our
finances and our national borders. Indeed, they have become television
soap operas which we follow with passing interest but no immediate
involvement.

While the Irish republican and the Basque separatist movements have a
minor impact on the lives of those of us in Europe, they are not embers
which might later fuel a larger fire. Far from it, for many, Britain and
Spain are admired as modern, wealthy and forward-looking nations. The
movements, not their nation enemies, are out of step with public
opinion.

In order for a nation or a movement to threaten, it has to have power.
It can achieve only so much through violence such as car bombs, fuelling
of insurgency or cross-border incursion. The ingredients to achieve
full-blown power are an economic base, popular support and military
force, which is increasingly focused on missiles, submarines and high
technology.

Vellupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,
might have the ability to grab headlines. He might be an obstacle in Sri
Lankan-Indian relations, or British-Sri Lankan relations in that his
publicity machine is run from London. He might dispatch a suicide bomber
to kill a cabinet minister. But Prabhakaran and his cause do not have
the ability to shift the tectonic plates of history.

The time to do it might have been 15 years ago, when his cause was seen
as synonymous with the aspirations of Tamil people in India. But the
time has past. Prabhakaran is a loser. He is another dying ember who
will unfortunately continue to spill blood until he is brought to book.

So it is with the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, which ironically gets its
support not from China, but from rebel movements in India. There is
nothing for the fire of its revolution to catch onto. It will kill,
fester and eventually die. Similar arguments can be used when assessing
the threat of tribal dictators in Africa and the drug barons and crazed
ideologues of Latin America.

BUT there is one area of conflict for which they cannot be used and that
is in wars underpinned by Islamic motivated violence. The most striking
example of this is Osama bin Laden, Islamic insurgent believed to be
holed up in Afghanistan. While his methods of battle are from the same
mould as those of Prabhakaran, his mass base is far wider and ultimately
a greater threat to world peace.

Why? Bin Laden represents the hardest line of Islamic violence, whose
causes have recently been played out on the West Bank and Gaza.

Further field, the fledgling unstable governments of Central Asia,
Kyrgystan, Kazakstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are all finding
themselves threatened by Islamic insurgencies to such an extent that
china, France, India, Russia, Turkey, Great Britain and the US are all
involved in trying to contain them.

Russia even conducted Exercise Southern Shield in April this year
involving the forces of Kazakstan, Kyrgystan and Tajikistan in
anti-insurgency operations. China is particularly sensitive to the
Islamic influence on its western borders, specifically in Xinjiang, and
is forging economic and intelligence links with the Central Asian states
in order to contain it.

Algeria has been in the grip of a full-blown insurgency. Egypt has been
victim of random terrorist slaughter. The Molucca islands of Indonesia
have been bloodied with Christan-Muslim violence. It is a simmering
threat in Malyasia and a test-case administration in Afghanistan. The
jihad is heralded on the streets of Bradford and Kosovo. It overshadows
swathes of India and is underpinning the war in Kashmir.

Yet, despite all this, the pan-Islamic movement is unlikely to break
through into the major league. It is disorganized and fragmented. There
is no palpable or material prize, nor is there any overall record of
delivering good government or of improving living standards. The Taliban
administration in Afghanistan is unlikely to enthuse the software
engineer in Malaysia or commodity broker in Dubai. Global television is
doing much to show the younger generation that fast cars and beautiful
clothes may be a more appealing life goal than the Kalashnikov and the
suicide bomb.

In my thriller, Absolute Measures, I told the story of a young man from
Sudan, who wanted to become an international businessman, but whose
ambitions kept being shattered by world events like a hostage rescue
mission and the East Asian economic collapse. He was neither fanatical,
nor religious. But he ended up planning to blow up a G8 economic summit
meeting in London with the biological weapon, anthrax. A small release
of anthrax can kill 3,000 to 300,000 people. He believed his act would
be the American equivalent to Hiroshima, a blow so deadly that all
conflict stops.

This scenario has yet to happen. It may never. But it is about as far as
the pan-Islamic movement is capable of going. Once unleashed, there
would be no government, no institutions, no wealth and no technology to
build an alternative society. It is an unnerving threat, but little
else.

The spotlight should then search for those emerging and competing forces
which could shift the tectonic plates of global politics. For it is in
this category that our own lives could be directly affected.

At the time of writing, I can identify five: America/Europe, India,
China, Japan and Russia. Any conflict in danger of spreading to a
wild-cat global fire would have to involve one of these arenas of power.

The first and second categories of conflict would ignite the third
category and pit strong nations directly against strong nations. In
other words, great empires will not move against each other as in World
War I and Napoleonic Wars. But they could find themselves caught up in
hostilities because of localized conflict.

Had Russia been stronger, this would have happened during the Kosovo
war. Serbia is a long-standing ally of Russia's and in one heated moment
President Boris Yeltsin did, in fact, make references to a "Third World
War".

America's unequivocal support of Israel and refusal to implement UN
resolutions are coming under increasing pressure. The diplomatic double
standards are being noted by Russia, China, India and others. They could
also internally weaken the Arab governments, such as in Saudi Arabia and
Egypt, which are strategically allied to the United States.

Should Tibetan separatists abandon their official policy of non-violence
and take up weapons again, India will come into conflict with China. My
book Dragon Fire deals with this issue and it is worth dwelling on,
because it is difficult to identify any other place in the world which
at present has so many paths that could lead to conflict.

Pakistan is a deeply-entrenched military ally of China. Pakistan and
India are already in conflict. India and China already have border
disputes and the simmering and unsolved problem of Tibet.

Should Pakistan or India cross the Line-of-Control again; should
Pakistan feel its existence is being threatened; should China choose to
weaken India by increasing its help to Pakistan over Kashmir; should
China test India's naval power by pushing further into the Indian Ocean;
should China demand that India end its sanctuary for Tibetan
exiles?should any of these variables happen, then these two great
emerging nations will find themselves in conflict.

As the Soviet Union and the United States competed to prove who had the
better political and economic systems during the Cold War, so China and
India will compete during this century for moral and ideological
leadership of the developing world.

This is a much wider topic than this article on global conflict allows,
but it is worth noting that smaller wars in Asia could begin to be
determined through the bi-polar eyes of these two aspirant superpowers.

An immediate example is Myanmar. China is using the western Myanmar
coastline as its naval frontier against India. It has taken long leases
from the Myanmar government to build naval facilities at Hangyyi Island
and on the Coco Islands, which are only a few miles from India's Andaman
Islands. It is building airbases in the north of the country and
remaking the roads heading to the Indian border so they can take
military vehicles.

Myanmar is threatened by a number of violent insurgencies, the most
famous of which involves the Christian Karens. It is also haunted by the
powerfully charismatic figure of Aung San Suu Kyi, who the West regards
as an all ?encompassing symbol of the democratic aspirations of most
people living there.

It is not inconceivable, therefore, that as China's military presence
increases, India will give open support to the peaceful and violent
forces seeking to destabilize the Myanmar regime. With a democratic
government installed in Myanmar, the Chinese may find they are no longer
welcome and their forward base against Indian sovereignty would be
eroded.

One of India's last attempts at intervention in Sri Lanka in the late
eighties went badly wrong. But then, there was no absolute prize and the
policy was driven by internal demands of the local Tamil population.

The prize has now become more clearly identified and applies equally to
India and China. It is no less than the race to become the next
superpower. India's nuclear tests are evidence of the popularity of such
a goal.

Circling around them are other competing forces which could result in
conflict. For example, China does not enjoy watching Vietnam's success
in winning back influence in Laos and Cambodia. Given that Vietnam and
China are long-standing enemies, some form of proxy war should be
expected again in Indochina.

ON a more sophisticated level, we should examine the rivalry of Japan
and China. Under the US security umbrella, Japan has had a lead role in
Asia and contributed enormously to the economic growth of East Asia.

But Because of its record of 20th Century atrocities, Japan can never be
accepted by other countries as the moral beacon for the region.
Therefore, as China strengthens and US influence wanes, Japan is looking
around to change its own regional role and get into bed with new allies.

Its post-World War II constitution restricts the development of the navy
by declaring that the country will never again maintain 'land, sea, or
air forces or other war potential'. Japanese forces were barred from
serving overseas and in 1976 the government limited defence spending to
1 per cent of Gross Domestic Product.

By 1981, that began to change. In response to the Soviet threat, Japan
set about securing its sea lanes to a distance of 1,000 nautical miles
beyond its shores. Japan's navy retained its strength after the Soviet
threat diminished and current thinking takes into account China' naval
expansion, North Korea, and uncertainty over the long-term future of the
US security umbrella.

Indeed, during the 1999 Kosovo conflict, US Forces were so stretched
that they had to withdraw the aircraft carrier it had permanently
stationed in Japan, in order to put one carrier in the Adriatic and one
in the Gulf. It was the first time for several decades that the US did
not have a carrier in the region and it was enough to focus Japanese
minds.

In one of my earlier books Dragon Strike: The Millennium War, I painted
a scenario whereby China Sea, threatening Japan's oil supplies from the
Middle East. The United States was slow to give Japan the support it
expected, so Japan carried out an underground nuclear test, thus joining
the select group of nuclear weapon states. Dragon Strike was published
before the Indo-Pak nuclear tests which have made the possibility of
Japanese policy turning in that direction even more real.

We should look quickly at Russia, although for the next two decades, I
suspect she will remain in its present role of a fallen empire, to be
shown respect, but not yet ready to resume any great role of leadership.
Its aspiration is to lead an alliance with India and China against
American influence. It is unlikely to be cohesive, and Russia's main
role will be to supply sophisticated weapons to India, China and anyone
else who wants to buy.

This has the same impact as selling rifles to the Red Indians. Countries
will be able to jump generation in weapons development, and, as long as
they know how to use them, neutralize the threats of more sophisticated
armies.

LASTLY, then, let us look at how alliances might shift and forge in the
coming years. The concept of democracy, now underlined by its ethical
foreign policy, is forging an alliance of genuinely democratic nations.
This is in marked contrast to the quasi-democracies of, say, Ershad or
Marcos propped up by the US during the Cold War.

India automatically falls into this alliance which was underscored by
President Clinton's visit in March, arguably the most important
presidential visit in geo-political terms since Nixon went to China in
1972.

India will seek new alliances in Asia, most notably with Japan because
of the common goal of balancing any threat from China. It will also make
efforts with Vietnam for the same reason, although this will be less
important and more difficult.

China will seek and win support from most of the South East Asian
nations, although this will be less military and more economic and
diplomatic. Sri Lanka also veers towards the China camp.

As Pakistan becomes increasingly volatile and poor, it will seek solace
in China. The amount of support it receives depends on how China is
faring on the more modern international stage with issues such as the
World Trade Organization and any detenteit is seeking with India.

Pakistan faces the dark abyss of following in the footsteps of China's
other unfortunate allies, Cambodia, North Korea and Burma, none of which
has an enviable track record. Iran is becoming a moral beacon for a 21st
century Islamic world and, like China, is learning to play the
aspirations of modern diplomacy with the blacker threats of jihad and
terrorism.

Sub-Saharan Africa, alas, will fail to excite except through television
pictures of war and famine. Ii will deliver us guilt and anger, but not
nuclear armed submarines and superpower aspirations. North Africa will
play host to Islamic violence for years to come. the Israelis and
Palestinians will be our barometer as to how much blood will be shed.

Latin America will remain a strange, distant, colourful and fragmented
force, with its greatest threat to peace being the export of drugs. It
is a place of conflict, particularly Colombia, but it involves no power
except the United States. The helicopter gun-ships over the cocaine
plantations may evoke images of Vietnam, but it is simply not in that
league.

Europe will be peppered with terrorism and outbreaks of regional
violence. But this juggernaut of Economic Union is on the way to
becoming a superpower of sorts and a powerful European army based on
democratic values may follow. Yugoslavia is over. Europe can now look
ahead without being haunted by the shadows of European massacres.

So we have basically three units of power. The world of Islam, the world
of democratic nations and a new world embodied in the aspirations of
authoritarian China.

The primary battlefields will be the poorer regions and countries of
Asia, where Japan, China, India and for the moment Pakistan will jostle
for position; Indochina, Central Asia, Tibet and Kashmir are all
vulnerable.

If lessons are to be learnt, perhaps they can be drawn from f
groups like the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, UNITA in Angola and the
Islamic insurgents in Kashmir. Ironically, each was the product of
something else altogether.

Indira Gandhi created the Tamil separatist movement because she was
afraid of Tamil separatism in India. The threat has passed. The Tigers
kill on. The United States created UNITA as one small Cold War proxy
conflict to fight the Soviet-backed government in Angola. The cause has
gone. UNITA kills on. The United States also helped create the Taliban
in Afghanistan whose skills are now being used be the insurgents in
Kashmir. Soviet troops have long gone from Afghanistan. Instead, Kashmir
suffers. All of these movements are continuing to spill blood long after
their creators have shifted onto other things.

This is an article about real-politik, not human rights. Yet, if any
wisdom is to be gleaned from conflict over the past 30 years, perhaps it
is about intervention. If the United States had not intervened,
Afghanistan would now be a newly democratized country roughly within the
Russian sphere of influence.

I NATO had not intervened in Kosovo, Milosevic would be out of office
now and a new violent force of Albanian nationalism would not have been
created. If Pakistan had not intervened in Kashmir, it might not have
charted a course for its own decay. Instead it might have been a beacon
of a modern Islamic nation.

The mantle which was once the preserve of America and the Soviet Union
is beginning to fall on China and India. Let us hope they have enough
foresight to do a better job.

(Humphrey Hawksley's face and voice are known to millions through his
broadcasts on BBC television and radio. From 1986 to 1997 he worked
mostly in Asia, covering conflict in Sri Lanka to the Pacific.

He moved to London in 1997, and he has been reporting from Iraq, Kosovo,
Timor and other places of conflict. He is the co-author, with Simon
Hloberton, of the best-selling Dragon Strike: The Millennium War and of
two acclaimed international thrillers, Ceremony of Innocence and
Absolute Measures.)




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<b><font size=+2>Will there be a Third World War?</font></b>
<p>The Week magazine,&nbsp; December 31, 2000 (New Delhi)
<br>December 29, 2000
<p>By <b>Humphrey Hawksley</b>/ London
<p><b><i>The primary battlefields of tomorrow will be the poorer regions
and countries of Asia. Indochina, Central Asia, Tibet and Kashmir are all
vulnerable spots. Local conflicts in these places have the potential to
develop into a wild-cat global fire.</i></b>
<p><b>THE SUDDEN</b> rapprochement between the United States and North
Korea has thrown a new spotlight on the jigsaw puzzle of world conflicts.
The Korean peninsula, recently declared the most dangerous place on earth,
has now be come a model of sunshine diplomacy.
<p>It is now probable that the two Koreas have embarked upon a slow and
difficult path towards reconciliation and eventual reunification. There
will be threats and tempers, but the spectre of the ceasefire village of
Panmunjon being used as the flashpoint for the Third World War is rapidly
diminishing. It is a fitting moment, therefore, to examine the dozens of
conflicts around the world and ask where they might be leading and how
should they be dealt with.
<p>Broadly speaking, the conflicts fall into three categories. There are
those breaking out from the dying embers of bygone regimes. North Korea,
East Timor and Kosovo/ Serbia fit into this category. The demise of Robert
Mugabe in Zimbabwe is likely to become another example.
<p>There are those which are highly localized and, although violent and
dreadful for innocents caught up in them, do not threaten the wider balance
of world peace. The Sierra Leone diamond war is an example.
<p>And there are those which draw wide support from elsewhere in the world.
The Palestinian uprising against Israel and the insurgency in Kashmir are
examples of these.
<p>On a lesser scale, the Sino-Japanese dispute over the uninhabited Senkaku
or Taioyu-tai islands in the East China Sea has in recent years incited
feelings of Chinese and Japanese nationalism far beyond the worth of the
territory being claimed, as have the long-running disputes over the Spratly
and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.
<p>The first two categories of conflict have emerged over the past decade
largely because of the end of the Cold War. Before that havoc regional,
tribal and nationalistic antagonisms were largely suppressed within the
camps of the two superpowers.
<p>The Yugoslav conflict flared up as soon as the Soviet/Eastern Bloc umbrella
was lifted from it. President Milosovic himself was a creation of the Soviets.
He took a long time to destruct, but now he has gone, Europe is on the
mend, and no more Milosovics are waiting in the wings of power.
<p>Presidents Marcos, Suharto, Ershad and others were creations of America
who were dragged from the stage when their time was up. Saddam Hussein
of Iraq was a quasi-American product which went wrong.
<p>In these first two categories, anyone living in the conflict zone will
suffer, either as a result of war and bloodshed, or as a result of sanctions,
as in the case of Iraq and Serbia.
<p>For those of us living outside, life goes on as normal. They are contained
problems which do not directly affect our jobs, our homes, our finances
and our national borders. Indeed, they have become television soap operas
which we follow with passing interest but no immediate involvement.
<p>While the Irish republican and the Basque separatist movements have
a minor impact on the lives of those of us in Europe, they are not embers
which might later fuel a larger fire. Far from it, for many, Britain and
Spain are admired as modern, wealthy and forward-looking nations. The movements,
not their nation enemies, are out of step with public opinion.
<p>In order for a nation or a movement to threaten, it has to have power.
It can achieve only so much through violence such as car bombs, fuelling
of insurgency or cross-border incursion. The ingredients to achieve full-blown
power are an economic base, popular support and military force, which is
increasingly focused on missiles, submarines and high technology.
<p>Vellupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,
might have the ability to grab headlines. He might be an obstacle in Sri
Lankan-Indian relations, or British-Sri Lankan relations in that his publicity
machine is run from London. He might dispatch a suicide bomber to kill
a cabinet minister. But Prabhakaran and his cause do not have the ability
to shift the tectonic plates of history.
<p>The time to do it might have been 15 years ago, when his cause was seen
as synonymous with the aspirations of Tamil people in India. But the time
has past. Prabhakaran is a loser. He is another dying ember who will unfortunately
continue to spill blood until he is brought to book.
<p>So it is with the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, which ironically gets
its support not from China, but from rebel movements in India. There is
nothing for the fire of its revolution to catch onto. It will kill, fester
and eventually die. Similar arguments can be used when assessing the threat
of tribal dictators in Africa and the drug barons and crazed ideologues
of Latin America.
<p><b>BUT</b> there is one area of conflict for which they cannot be used
and that is in wars underpinned by Islamic motivated violence. The most
striking example of this is Osama bin Laden, Islamic insurgent believed
to be holed up in Afghanistan. While his methods of battle are from the
same mould as those of Prabhakaran, his mass base is far wider and ultimately
a greater threat to world peace.
<p>Why? Bin Laden represents the hardest line of Islamic violence, whose
causes have recently been played out on the West Bank and Gaza.
<p>Further field, the fledgling unstable governments of Central Asia, Kyrgystan,
Kazakstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are all finding themselves threatened
by Islamic insurgencies to such an extent that china, France, India, Russia,
Turkey, Great Britain and the US are all involved in trying to contain
them.
<p>Russia even conducted Exercise Southern Shield in April this year involving
the forces of Kazakstan, Kyrgystan and Tajikistan in anti-insurgency operations.
China is particularly sensitive to the Islamic influence on its western
borders, specifically in Xinjiang, and is forging economic and intelligence
links with the Central Asian states in order to contain it.
<p>Algeria has been in the grip of a full-blown insurgency. Egypt has been
victim of random terrorist slaughter. The Molucca islands of Indonesia
have been bloodied with Christan-Muslim violence. It is a simmering threat
in Malyasia and a test-case administration in Afghanistan. The jihad is
heralded on the streets of Bradford and Kosovo. It overshadows swathes
of India and is underpinning the war in Kashmir.
<p>Yet, despite all this, the pan-Islamic movement is unlikely to break
through into the major league. It is disorganized and fragmented. There
is no palpable or material prize, nor is there any overall record of delivering
good government or of improving living standards. The Taliban administration
in Afghanistan is unlikely to enthuse the software engineer in Malaysia
or commodity broker in Dubai. Global television is doing much to show the
younger generation that fast cars and beautiful clothes may be a more appealing
life goal than the Kalashnikov and the suicide bomb.
<p>In my thriller, Absolute Measures, I told the story of a young man from
Sudan, who wanted to become an international businessman, but whose ambitions
kept being shattered by world events like a hostage rescue mission and
the East Asian economic collapse. He was neither fanatical, nor religious.
But he ended up planning to blow up a G8 economic summit meeting in London
with the biological weapon, anthrax. A small release of anthrax can kill
3,000 to 300,000 people. He believed his act would be the American equivalent
to Hiroshima, a blow so deadly that all conflict stops.
<p>This scenario has yet to happen. It may never. But it is about as far
as the pan-Islamic movement is capable of going. Once unleashed, there
would be no government, no institutions, no wealth and no technology to
build an alternative society. It is an unnerving threat, but little else.
<p>The spotlight should then search for those emerging and competing forces
which could shift the tectonic plates of global politics. For it is in
this category that our own lives could be directly affected.
<p>At the time of writing, I can identify five: America/Europe, India,
China, Japan and Russia. Any conflict in danger of spreading to a wild-cat
global fire would have to involve one of these arenas of power.
<p>The first and second categories of conflict would ignite the third category
and pit strong nations directly against strong nations. In other words,
great empires will not move against each other as in World War I and Napoleonic
Wars. But they could find themselves caught up in hostilities because of
localized conflict.
<p>Had Russia been stronger, this would have happened during the Kosovo
war. Serbia is a long-standing ally of Russia's and in one heated moment
President Boris Yeltsin did, in fact, make references to a "Third World
War".
<p>America's unequivocal support of Israel and refusal to implement UN
resolutions are coming under increasing pressure. The diplomatic double
standards are being noted by Russia, China, India and others. They could
also internally weaken the Arab governments, such as in Saudi Arabia and
Egypt, which are strategically allied to the United States.
<p>Should Tibetan separatists abandon their official policy of non-violence
and take up weapons again, India will come into conflict with China. My
book Dragon Fire deals with this issue and it is worth dwelling on, because
it is difficult to identify any other place in the world which at present
has so many paths that could lead to conflict.
<p>Pakistan is a deeply-entrenched military ally of China. Pakistan and
India are already in conflict. India and China already have border disputes
and the simmering and unsolved problem of Tibet.
<p>Should Pakistan or India cross the Line-of-Control again; should Pakistan
feel its existence is being threatened; should China choose to weaken India
by increasing its help to Pakistan over Kashmir; should China test India's
naval power by pushing further into the Indian Ocean; should China demand
that India end its sanctuary for Tibetan exiles?should any of these variables
happen, then these two great emerging nations will find themselves in conflict.
<p>As the Soviet Union and the United States competed to prove who had
the better political and economic systems during the Cold War, so China
and India will compete during this century for moral and ideological leadership
of the developing world.
<p>This is a much wider topic than this article on global conflict allows,
but it is worth noting that smaller wars in Asia could begin to be determined
through the bi-polar eyes of these two aspirant superpowers.
<p>An immediate example is Myanmar. China is using the western Myanmar
coastline as its naval frontier against India. It has taken long leases
from the Myanmar government to build naval facilities at Hangyyi Island
and on the Coco Islands, which are only a few miles from India's Andaman
Islands. It is building airbases in the north of the country and remaking
the roads heading to the Indian border so they can take military vehicles.
<p>Myanmar is threatened by a number of violent insurgencies, the most
famous of which involves the Christian Karens. It is also haunted by the
powerfully charismatic figure of Aung San Suu Kyi, who the West regards
as an all ?encompassing symbol of the democratic aspirations of most people
living there.
<p>It is not inconceivable, therefore, that as China's military presence
increases, India will give open support to the peaceful and violent forces
seeking to destabilize the Myanmar regime. With a democratic government
installed in Myanmar, the Chinese may find they are no longer welcome and
their forward base against Indian sovereignty would be eroded.
<p>One of India's last attempts at intervention in Sri Lanka in the late
eighties went badly wrong. But then, there was no absolute prize and the
policy was driven by internal demands of the local Tamil population.
<p>The prize has now become more clearly identified and applies equally
to India and China. It is no less than the race to become the next superpower.
India's nuclear tests are evidence of the popularity of such a goal.
<p>Circling around them are other competing forces which could result in
conflict. For example, China does not enjoy watching Vietnam's success
in winning back influence in Laos and Cambodia. Given that Vietnam and
China are long-standing enemies, some form of proxy war should be expected
again in Indochina.
<p><b>ON </b>a more sophisticated level, we should examine the rivalry
of Japan and China. Under the US security umbrella, Japan has had a lead
role in Asia and contributed enormously to the economic growth of East
Asia.
<p>But Because of its record of 20th Century atrocities, Japan can never
be accepted by other countries as the moral beacon for the region. Therefore,
as China strengthens and US influence wanes, Japan is looking around to
change its own regional role and get into bed with new allies.
<p>Its post-World War II constitution restricts the development of the
navy by declaring that the country will never again maintain 'land, sea,
or air forces or other war potential'. Japanese forces were barred from
serving overseas and in 1976 the government limited defence spending to
1 per cent of Gross Domestic Product.
<p>By 1981, that began to change. In response to the Soviet threat, Japan
set about securing its sea lanes to a distance of 1,000 nautical miles
beyond its shores. Japan's navy retained its strength after the Soviet
threat diminished and current thinking takes into account China' naval
expansion, North Korea, and uncertainty over the long-term future of the
US security umbrella.
<p>Indeed, during the 1999 Kosovo conflict, US Forces were so stretched
that they had to withdraw the aircraft carrier it had permanently stationed
in Japan, in order to put one carrier in the Adriatic and one in the Gulf.
It was the first time for several decades that the US did not have a carrier
in the region and it was enough to focus Japanese minds.
<p>In one of my earlier books Dragon Strike: The Millennium War, I painted
a scenario whereby China Sea, threatening Japan's oil supplies from the
Middle East. The United States was slow to give Japan the support it expected,
so Japan carried out an underground nuclear test, thus joining the select
group of nuclear weapon states. Dragon Strike was published before the
Indo-Pak nuclear tests which have made the possibility of Japanese policy
turning in that direction even more real.
<p>We should look quickly at Russia, although for the next two decades,
I suspect she will remain in its present role of a fallen empire, to be
shown respect, but not yet ready to resume any great role of leadership.
Its aspiration is to lead an alliance with India and China against American
influence. It is unlikely to be cohesive, and Russia's main role will be
to supply sophisticated weapons to India, China and anyone else who wants
to buy.
<p>This has the same impact as selling rifles to the Red Indians. Countries
will be able to jump generation in weapons development, and, as long as
they know how to use them, neutralize the threats of more sophisticated
armies.
<p><b>LASTLY</b>, then, let us look at how alliances might shift and forge
in the coming years. The concept of democracy, now underlined by its ethical
foreign policy, is forging an alliance of genuinely democratic nations.
This is in marked contrast to the quasi-democracies of, say, Ershad or
Marcos propped up by the US during the Cold War.
<p>India automatically falls into this alliance which was underscored by
President Clinton's visit in March, arguably the most important presidential
visit in geo-political terms since Nixon went to China in 1972.
<p>India will seek new alliances in Asia, most notably with Japan because
of the common goal of balancing any threat from China. It will also make
efforts with Vietnam for the same reason, although this will be less important
and more difficult.
<p>China will seek and win support from most of the South East Asian nations,
although this will be less military and more economic and diplomatic. Sri
Lanka also veers towards the China camp.
<p>As Pakistan becomes increasingly volatile and poor, it will seek solace
in China. The amount of support it receives depends on how China is faring
on the more modern international stage with issues such as the World Trade
Organization and any detenteit is seeking with India.
<p>Pakistan faces the dark abyss of following in the footsteps of China's
other unfortunate allies, Cambodia, North Korea and Burma, none of which
has an enviable track record. Iran is becoming a moral beacon for a 21st
century Islamic world and, like China, is learning to play the aspirations
of modern diplomacy with the blacker threats of jihad and terrorism.
<p>Sub-Saharan Africa, alas, will fail to excite except through television
pictures of war and famine. Ii will deliver us guilt and anger, but not
nuclear armed submarines and superpower aspirations. North Africa will
play host to Islamic violence for years to come. the Israelis and Palestinians
will be our barometer as to how much blood will be shed.
<p>Latin America will remain a strange, distant, colourful and fragmented
force, with its greatest threat to peace being the export of drugs. It
is a place of conflict, particularly Colombia, but it involves no power
except the United States. The helicopter gun-ships over the cocaine plantations
may evoke images of Vietnam, but it is simply not in that league.
<p>Europe will be peppered with terrorism and outbreaks of regional violence.
But this juggernaut of Economic Union is on the way to becoming a superpower
of sorts and a powerful European army based on democratic values may follow.
Yugoslavia is over. Europe can now look ahead without being haunted by
the shadows of European massacres.
<p>So we have basically three units of power. The world of Islam, the world
of democratic nations and a new world embodied in the aspirations of authoritarian
China.
<p>The primary battlefields will be the poorer regions and countries of
Asia, where Japan, China, India and for the moment Pakistan will jostle
for position; Indochina, Central Asia, Tibet and Kashmir are all vulnerable.
<p>If lessons are to be learnt, perhaps they can be drawn from f
<br>groups like the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, UNITA in Angola and the
Islamic insurgents in Kashmir. Ironically, each was the product of something
else altogether.
<p>Indira Gandhi created the Tamil separatist movement because she was
afraid of Tamil separatism in India. The threat has passed. The Tigers
kill on. The United States created UNITA as one small Cold War proxy conflict
to fight the Soviet-backed government in Angola. The cause has gone. UNITA
kills on. The United States also helped create the Taliban in Afghanistan
whose skills are now being used be the insurgents in Kashmir. Soviet troops
have long gone from Afghanistan. Instead, Kashmir suffers. All of these
movements are continuing to spill blood long after their creators have
shifted onto other things.
<p>This is an article about real-politik, not human rights. Yet, if any
wisdom is to be gleaned from conflict over the past 30 years, perhaps it
is about intervention. If the United States had not intervened, Afghanistan
would now be a newly democratized country roughly within the Russian sphere
of influence.
<p><b>I NATO</b> had not intervened in Kosovo, Milosevic would be out of
office now and a new violent force of Albanian nationalism would not have
been created. If Pakistan had not intervened in Kashmir, it might not have
charted a course for its own decay. Instead it might have been a beacon
of a modern Islamic nation.
<p>The mantle which was once the preserve of America and the Soviet Union
is beginning to fall on China and India. Let us hope they have enough foresight
to do a better job.
<p>(Humphrey Hawksley's face and voice are known to millions through his
broadcasts on BBC television and radio. From 1986 to 1997 he worked mostly
in Asia, covering conflict in Sri Lanka to the Pacific.
<p>He moved to London in 1997, and he has been reporting from Iraq, Kosovo,
Timor and other places of conflict. He is the co-author, with Simon Hloberton,
of the best-selling Dragon Strike: The Millennium War and of two acclaimed
international thrillers, Ceremony of Innocence and Absolute Measures.)
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