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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Peters TSUNAMI RIPPLES: A NEW STRATEGIC MAP |
| 2005-01-06 |
| EFL The Indian Ocean theater contains the world's largest democracy (India), the world's most populous Muslim state (Indonesia), the greatest concentration of oil (on the Arabian Peninsula and in the Persian Gulf), the first Muslim nuclear power (Pakistan), the most progressive economies in Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand) and the greatest concentration of terrorists in the world. On its eastern extreme, this vast region is bounded by Australia, a sturdy Western outpost. To the west, the Indian Ocean laps the old Swahili Coast and the Republic of South Africa, a state on its way to becoming the continent's first indigenous great power. This is where Islam must — and can — change; where nuclear weapons are likeliest to be used; where the future economic potential is vast; where the bulk of the world's heroin is produced; and where the heroin of the world economy — oil — could be cut off with a handful of nuclear weapons (think Iran, the Suez Canal and a few Arab ports). The tsunami drew a strategic map of the 21st century. It took a tragedy to inspire serious American involvement in the region (apart from the Middle East, with which we remain rabidly obsessed). While cognizant of the horrors that brought them to Indonesia, U.S. Navy officers are relieved to have a mission at last. Largely excluded from participation in Iraq and Afghanistan because of the reactionary choices the service made, our Navy has suffered from a perception of fading relevance. Yet, our Navy remains as important to America's security as it ever was. The problem is that the Navy itself can't see it. The service suffers from the destructive nostalgia that afflicted the Army a decade ago, the desire to perfect a force to fight the wars of the past. Nonetheless, our Navy remains the lead service for security affairs in the Indian Ocean. The Air Force will have a role in crises, while the Army and Marines will be needed to fight the region's ground campaigns of tomorrow (they're coming), but our naval presence is the indispensable military and strategic tool required by the Indian Ocean's strategic environment. We have lost our focus on the control of the seas. India has become a prized source of top-flight human capital. Afghanistan's proving that democracy can work in the absence of superhighways and investment bankers. South Africa is pioneering a dynamic multiracial society on a continent old-school thinkers blithely write off. And Indonesia, for all its problems, relishes its new democracy and its tolerant forms of Islam. The future is waving its arms and shouting, but we see only the past. |
| Posted by:Mrs. Davis |
| #3 JM! You were Sooooooo close to a great lucid comment! damn! |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-01-06 10:37:23 PM |
| #2 No nation or nations can fight a war(s) that haven't been fought yet - the best anyone can gen do is anticipate based on best evidence but remain flexible as against the unknown. The prob for Islam in the Indian Ocean is the same as for Islam in the rest of the world - Islam, like Communism, tyrannically maintains the status quo and is mostly inflexible to change or reform, espec when it comes to economics and domestic or socio-cultural materialism. A primary reason for the unrest in the Islamic world is that the average or ordinary Muslim is unable to care for himself or his own, nor is he allowed by the mullahs to engage in individualist iniatives whereby he materially improve his personal lot in life. Militarily conquering non-Muslim societies in the long term gives new resources to use and consume, but doesn't resolve his basic problem. The more developed and wealthy non-Muslim sectors in Indonesia want autonomy or independence, which the majority local Muslims fear because without the non-Muslim sectors they are gen just a bunch of uneducated, un-modern farmers and limited traders. Many Islamist militants are in reality fighting to keep their nation together in order to preserve Muslim political control over their non-Muslim donminated local and national economies! Its very similar in the ME, where modernity is generally for the oil-rich ruling few, the mullahs, and political-theocratic elites, not the ordinary masses -its easy to blame capitalism and America but in reality this situation had existed for many hundreds of years. Like the Leftists, Socialists, Marxists or Commies, men like Osama see the near-term looming self-implosion, self-oblivion, and self-irrelevance of Islam as a potent force for anything - THEIR VIOLENT RADICALISM IS AS MUCH TO SAVE ISLAM AS IT IS TO EMPOWER AND ENFORCE IT ON THE WORLD, AN ACT OF DESPERATION! |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2005-01-06 9:33:16 PM |
| #1 I personally think South Africa is well on its way to becoming the new Zimbabwe of the continent, not the new super power. None of my female expat friends are willing to take an assignment there because of the high risk of rape, robbery and general mayhem. I only hope my cousins in Cape Town have moved off-continent. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-01-06 4:26:12 PM |